Obex, the Framework Ventures-backed incubator, began deploying $1 billion on Wednesday to connect the Sky ecosystem’s USDS stablecoin with revenue from tangible assets like AI data centers, housing and energy, boosting real-world strategies beyond crypto-native sources of dividends.
The first group of assets includes products from Maple, USD.ai, Daylight, Centrifuge, Securitize, River, TVL Capital and Better. Each aims to bridge the gap between crypto markets and parts of the real economy, including lending, housing finance, energy and AI infrastructure, often by turning these assets into blockchain-based instruments via tokenization.
The firms will work with Obex to add new tokenized products designed to generate dividends and increase USDS usage across their platforms. They will also work to develop and roll out new return-generating tokenized assets.
Sky, one of the oldest decentralized financial lending (DeFi) protocols and issuer of $10 billion USDS, is trying to move beyond the closed circuits that have long defined crypto lending. The protocol brought in $435 million in annual revenue by 2025 and plans to push the dollar-pegged stablecoin’s supply to over $20 billion next year.
Obex aims to help Sky get there by plugging new revenue streams into the system. Last year, it won a mandate to allocate up to $2.5 billion of Sky’s USDS reserves to real-world assets to generate returns.
“We are moving beyond circular DeFi yield sources and towards high-quality yields from structured credit markets, fintech, energy infrastructure, AI CapEx, real estate and other productive sectors,” said Parker Edwards, a partner at Framework Ventures.
The push reflects a broader shift towards tokenization, where assets such as loans, funds or infrastructure projects are represented on blockchain networks. Proponents say this can make it easier to move capital, track ownership and open access to a wider pool of investors.
The real-world tokenized asset market is growing rapidly, tripling in value to $26 billion in the past year, data from RWA.xyz shows. This growth is driven by demand for more stable and predictable returns than those typically found in crypto loans and other speculative strategies.
