Protocol Economics

How yield flows from bonds and T-bills to sUSDest holders, which fees apply, and where fees go.

How yield flows from the underlying assets to sUSDest holders, which fees apply, and where the fees go.

Yield Waterfall

net yield to depositors fees to treasury

Net Yield

Ignoring timing, credit losses and cash drag, sUSDest's net yield can be approximated as:

y_{net} \approx w_b \, y_b \, (1 - f_p) + (1 - w_b) \, y_t \, (1 - f_a) + \frac{S^{USDest}_{unstaked}}{\mathrm{NAV}} \, y_t \, (1 - f_a)

where w_b is the share of vault NAV in bonds, y_b is the weighted coupon yield of the bond portfolio, y_t is the T-bill yield on reserves, f_p is the performance fee and f_a is the base yield admin fee.

The last term reflects that base yield is earned on the entire USDest reserve, including USDest held outside the vault, and all of it is harvested into sUSDest. The higher the share of USDest that is not staked, the more sUSDest earns from reserves it does not hold.

Illustrative only

Using the launch fee values (f_p = f_a = 10\%) and assumed inputs of w_b = 65\%, y_b = 9\%, y_t = 3.6\%, with all USDest staked, net yield is about 6.4%. The fee rates are the actual launch values; the yields and portfolio mix are assumptions, not forecasts or targets. Actual yield depends on the portfolio, rates, fees, timing and credit performance.

Fee Surfaces

Surface	Charged on	Parameter	Rate
Base yield admin fee	T-bill yield harvested from the USDest reserve	`BASE_YIELD_ADMIN_FEE_BPS`	10%
Performance fee	Bond coupon income deposited into the vault	`PERFORMANCE_FEE_BPS`	10%
Institutional mint fee	USDC deposited to mint USDest	`MINT_FEE_BPS`	0%
Institutional redeem fee	USDest burned for USDC	`REDEEM_FEE_BPS`	0%

No fee is charged on staking, and no fee is charged by the protocol on epoch redemptions.

Every fee rate is bounded in code at 3000 bps (30%), so no parameter change — even a mistaken one — can take a majority of income.

Where Fees Go

There is no separate fee-collector contract. Fees are minted directly to the Foundation treasury address held in RiskParameters at the moment they are earned — at base-yield harvest and at coupon deposit — so every fee accrual is a single, traceable onchain event. Treasury funds are used for:

protocol operations under the Services Agreement with the Operating Company (engineering, diligence, compliance, attestations);
secondary-market liquidity for USDest and sUSDest;
security (audits, bug bounty) and ecosystem development.

No Token

USD.estate has no governance or utility token, and there is no token allocation, vesting schedule or airdrop. If that ever changes, a full tokenomics disclosure (supply, allocations, cliffs and vesting, in text as well as charts) will be published here first.