2026 DeFi Stablecoin Yield Comparison: Which Protocol Fits You Best?

Unitas, AAVE, Compound, Morpho, Sky, Ethena Protocols Stablecoin Yield Analysis and Risk Guide

As the DeFi (Decentralized Finance) ecosystem matures, stablecoin yields have become an important way for users to participate in on-chain finance and grow their assets. Unlike high-volatility assets, stablecoin yield products typically rely on lending interest, protocol savings rates, or market-neutral hedging strategies, allowing users to earn sustainable returns while controlling volatility.

This article analyzes the six leading DeFi stablecoin yield protocols — **Unitas, AAVE, Compound, Morpho, Sky, and Ethena **— and introduces how to access them through BenPay DeFi Earn, a one-stop platform for cross-chain management and yield aggregation.

A Quick Overview of DeFi Protocols: Yields, Risks, Liquidity, Etc

What risks need to be noted?

All DeFi stablecoin yield protocols are subject to risks such as smart contract, liquidation, and strategy risks. The sources of risk vary among different agreements. This article only provides mechanism analysis and does not constitute any commitment to returns.

In-Depth Analysis of Mainstream DeFi Protocols

Is Unitas Stablecoin Yield Safe? Analysis of Composite Strategic DeFi Protocol

The Unitas protocol offers an innovative USD-denominated yield mechanism on the Solana network, primarily driven by a market-neutral strategy.

**Source of Yield **

Unlike traditional bank interest, Unitas yield is generated through a proprietary on-chain yield engine designed to capture trading-based returns:

• Delta-Neutral Arbitrage: The protocol operates using Jupiter Liquidity Provider (JLP) pools. It deposits JLP as collateral while simultaneously opening an equivalent short position in the perpetual futures market.
• Funding Rate Capture: Through its delta-neutral positioning, Unitas locks in perpetual futures funding rate income, converting market trading demand into yield for stablecoin holders.
• Liquidity-Driven Returns: Additional yield comes from trading fees and arbitrage opportunities generated by market volatility. As a result, returns are decoupled from asset price movements and are instead positively correlated with overall market activity.

Yield Features

• High Annualized Returns: In 2025, Unitas achieved an annualized yield of approximately 16.7%.
• Market Neutrality: The yield engine is designed to neutralize price volatility risk. Regardless of bull or bear market conditions, the protocol can continue generating returns as long as trading activity exists.
• Native Yield Accrual: Users simply hold Unitas stablecoins in their Solana wallets to receive yield distributions natively, without relying on traditional financial intermediaries.

Risk & Liquidity

• Low Drawdown Risk: With modular risk controls and real-time monitoring, the protocol recorded a historical maximum drawdown of only -0.16% during volatile market conditions in 2025.
• Liquidity Protection:
  • Overcollateralized Reserves: Backed by 130%–200% over-reserves in major stablecoins such as USDT and USDC.
  • Permissionless Redemption: Users can freely and unconditionally redeem Unitas stablecoins for underlying USD stablecoins at any time.

How Is the Yield of the AAVE Protocol? Analysis of a Traditional Lending DeFi Protocol

Compared to Unitas’s more complex market-neutral strategy, Aave’s USDT/USDC yield mechanism—available on Solana, Ethereum, and other chains—is more traditional and straightforward.

Source of Yield

• Pool-to-Peer Lending Interest: All yield comes from interest paid by borrowers. When you deposit USDT or USDC, you provide liquidity to a lending pool. Borrowers lock up other assets (such as SOL or ETH) as overcollateralized collateral to borrow stablecoins and pay interest.
• Liquidation Penalty Sharing: When a borrower’s collateral value drops and triggers liquidation, a portion of the liquidation penalty is distributed to the protocol and liquidity providers.

Yield Characteristics

• Variable Market-Driven Returns: APYs fluctuate in real time based on supply and demand in the lending market.
  • High-Demand Periods: During bull markets or periods of strong leverage demand, USDT/USDC yields can spike (historically exceeding 20% for short periods).
  • Normal Conditions: As of January 2026, typical annualized yields range between 2.5% and 3.6%.
• Transparent & Passive: No user intervention is required. Yield accrues automatically per block and compounds over time.

Risk & Liquidity

• Bad Debt Risk: Although loans are overcollateralized, extreme market conditions combined with delayed liquidations could result in bad debt.
• Smart Contract Risk: As a long-established protocol, Aave has a strong security track record, but theoretical risks of code vulnerabilities still exist.
• Safety Module Protection: Aave maintains a Safety Module in which staked AAVE tokens serve as an insurance backstop against potential shortfalls.
• Very High Liquidity: Users can usually withdraw funds at any time.
• Utilization Constraints: Withdrawals may experience short delays only when pool utilization is extremely high (i.e., nearly all funds are borrowed), until borrowers repay or new deposits enter the pool.

How Does Compound Generate Stablecoin Yield? A Pool-Based Lending DeFi Protocol Explained

The Compound protocol is built on a traditional pool-based lending model, where yields are entirely driven by market demand for stablecoins rather than complex trading strategies.

Yield Sources

• Borrower Interest Payments: When you deposit USDC or USDT into the Compound protocol, your assets are placed into a liquidity pool. Returns primarily come from borrowers—often seeking leverage or liquidity mining opportunities—who pay interest to borrow these stablecoins.
• COMP Token Incentives (Occasionally): Historically, Compound has distributed its governance token, COMP, to incentivize deposits and borrowing. During certain periods, these rewards significantly boosted effective yields.

Yield Characteristics

• Floating Market Interest Rates: Interest rates automatically adjust in real time based on supply and demand within each pool.
  • Current Yields (January 2026): Typically fluctuate between 2% and 4%.
  • Extreme Scenarios: During periods of severe market volatility and surging borrowing demand, annualized yields can temporarily exceed 20%.
• cTokens: After depositing assets, users receive corresponding cTokens (e.g., depositing USDC yields cUSDC). The value of cTokens increases over time as interest accrues, representing both principal and earned yield.

Risk & Liquidity

• Risks:
  • Smart Contract Risk: Despite multiple audits and a long operating history, smart contract vulnerabilities remain a theoretical risk.
  • Liquidation Risk: While loans are overcollateralized, sharp market crashes may prevent liquidation mechanisms from fully covering losses.
  • Governance Risk: Protocol parameters are determined by COMP token holders through governance votes, which may affect future yield models or risk settings.
• Liquidity:
  • High Liquidity: USDC and USDT markets generally maintain strong liquidity, allowing users to withdraw most funds at any time.
  • Utilization Constraints: Similar to Aave, when most liquidity is borrowed, withdrawals may face short waiting periods.

Is Morpho Stablecoin Yield Safe? Analysis of the Lending-based DeFi Protocol Mechanism

Morpho is a decentralized lending infrastructure deployed on Ethereum. Its core module, Morpho Blue, provides highly customizable lending markets, while the Morpho Vault wraps this functionality for regular users, offering automated fund allocation and risk parameter management.

Source of Yield

• Lending interest income: When users deposit funds into a Morpho Vault, the funds are automatically allocated to over-collateralized lending markets. Borrowers’ interest payments form the main source of yield.
• Different vaults are managed by third-party Risk Curators (e.g., Steakhouse, Gauntlet), who set lending parameters and risk constraints. Funds, however, are always executed by smart contracts according to these rules.

Yield Features

• Accumulating share design: Vault shares increase in value as interest accrues (similar to wstETH), naturally achieving compounding without manual reinvestment.
• Parametric risk control: Strict Loan-to-Value (LLTV) ratios and liquidation mechanisms help mitigate defaults and extreme market events.

Risk & Liquidity

• Smart contract risk: The protocol has undergone multiple audits but remains theoretically subject to contract risk.
• Liquidity and redemption: Users can redeem USDC or USDT immediately, provided the Vault has sufficient liquidity.

Sky Stablecoin Yield Mechanism: Is SSR Savings Rate Reliable?

Sky Protocol (evolved from the original MakerDAO system) issues the stablecoin USDS and provides an official savings mechanism via the Sky Savings Rate (SSR). Users who deposit USDS into SSR receive sUSDS, an accumulating certificate that grows automatically over time.

Source of Yield

• Sky Savings Rate (SSR): Yield comes from the protocol’s overall operational revenue, including on-chain lending fees, protocol surplus, and real-world asset income (e.g., U.S. Treasury yields).
• SSR rates are determined and dynamically adjusted by Sky Governance.

Yield Features

• Net-value growth asset: The quantity of sUSDS remains constant, but the amount of USDS redeemable increases over time.
• Stable performance: Compared to market-driven lending rates, SSR typically exhibits low volatility, suitable for conservative, long-term allocations.

Risk & Liquidity

• Protocol and governance risk: Yield depends on Sky protocol operations and governance decisions.
• High liquidity: sUSDS can typically be redeemed for USDS anytime via official interfaces or DeFi markets, with no fixed lock-up.

Where Does Ethena USDe Stablecoin Yield Come From? Analysis of Strategic DeFi Protocols

Ethena USDe is a synthetic dollar (USDe), not backed by fiat reserves. It maintains relative stability through a Delta-Neutral (market-neutral) strategy.

Source of Yield

• Hedged funding rates: The protocol holds spot assets while simultaneously taking hedged positions in derivatives markets. In markets where long positions dominate, short positions earn positive funding rates.
• sUSDe holder returns are reflected through the accumulation of value rather than periodic distributions.

Yield Features

• Market sentiment correlation: Yields may increase during high-leverage, active long-market conditions and may decrease in extreme scenarios.
• Non-fixed income model: This is a strategy-based stablecoin yield, not traditional lending interest.

Risk & Liquidity

• Negative funding rates & extreme market risk: Prolonged negative funding rates may reduce yield. Redemption typically involves a cooling period of around 7 days, though USDe itself can be traded instantly on DEXs (subject to potential slippage).

User Types and Protocol Recommendations

If you are seeking stable, low-volatility stablecoin yields, Sky, Morpho, AAVE, and Compound protocols are more suitable. If you are willing to accept some market fluctuations for potentially higher returns, the Unitas protocol is a good choice. If you can **tolerate market sentiment–related risks, **the Ethena protocol may offer the highest returns.

BenPay DeFi Earn: One-Stop Stablecoin Yield Gateway

If you have already understood the yield logic of Unitas, AAVE, Compound, Morpho, Sky, and Ethena protocols, the real challenge lies in: How to efficiently switch between different chains, different stablecoins, and different redemption rules?

For ordinary users, DeFi protocols are numerous, and the operations are complex. BenPay DeFi Earn, built on the BenFen public chain, condenses these operations into a single click, providing direct access to Morpho, Sky, Ethena, and other major protocols with transparent, on-chain yields.

1. Key Features

• One-stop access: Unified entry to Morpho / Sky / Ethena / Aave / Compound / Solana for diverse yield options.
• Cross-chain convenience: Deposit BUSD (BenFen’s core asset, pegged 1:1 to USD, minted via USDT/USDC) to automatically convert to the target protocol’s stablecoin and redeem cross-chain.
• Auto-compounding: Yields automatically roll into principal with zero gas reinvestment.
• Risk control: Assets remain on-chain, fully under user control.
• Flexible redemption: Partial withdrawals are supported to optimize fund usage.

2. All Investment Targets Overview

A. SOL USD Investment

This investment target is based on the Unitas protocol, which runs a sophisticated trading strategy on Solana designed to isolate market price fluctuations and capture yield.

Core Mechanisms & Advantages:

• Market-Neutral Strategy: Unitas uses hedging to reduce dependency on price movements of assets like SOL, generating yield primarily from market activity rather than directional price changes.
• On-Chain Trading Fee Income: A portion of the protocol’s funds is deployed to provide liquidity on major Solana ecosystem trading platforms, earning continuous trading fee revenue.
• Funding Rate Income: Unitas simultaneously opens opposing positions in derivative markets to hedge market volatility while capturing funding rate income generated by long–short market structures.

By combining these two relatively uncorrelated income sources—trading fees and funding rates—Unitas creates a more stable and predictable yield model. Compared with a model relying solely on lending interest, it adapts better across different market environments.

B. AAVE USDC/USDT Investment

This investment target is based on AAVE, a decentralized lending protocol deployed across multiple major blockchains.

Core Mechanisms & Advantages:

• Open Liquidity Lending Market: Your assets continuously grow within an open liquidity market.
• Real Lending Interest Yield: AAVE operates like a transparent digital bank. When you deposit stablecoins, they become part of the global liquidity available for borrowers, including traders and dApps. In return, interest paid by borrowers is distributed to all depositors.
• Dynamic Interest Rates: Rates are determined by market demand; the higher the borrowing demand, the higher the deposit yield, which automatically compounds into your asset growth.

C. Compound USDC/USDT Investment

This investment target is based on Compound, a well-established decentralized lending protocol deployed across Ethereum and other blockchains.

Core Mechanisms & Advantages:

• Asset Shares Appreciate with the Pool: When you supply assets to Compound’s lending market, you receive a portion of the pool as your “shares.”
• Interest Accrual: As borrowers continuously pay interest, the total value of the pool grows. Your share percentage remains the same, so the value of your portion increases proportionally, automatically compounding over time.

D. Morpho USDC Investment

The underlying layer of this target is a lending vault connected to the Morpho protocol, a new-generation, efficient fund-matching system on Ethereum.

Core Mechanism and advantages:

• Institutional-grade vault management: Professional institutions manage and allocate funds.
• Real borrowing demand: Allocated to whitelisted institutional borrowers or DeFi protocols; yield comes directly from borrower interest.
• Share appreciation: Vault shares increase as interest accrues, no manual compounding required.

E. Morpho USDT Investment

The underlying layer of this target is connected to the Morpho protocol’s lending vault. Through intelligent algorithms, funds are lent to over-collateralized institutional borrowers to achieve stable lending returns.

Core Mechanism and advantages:

• Borrowing interest: Yield comes entirely from real borrower interest; may increase when market demand rises.
• Preferred collateral: Managed by Gauntlet using risk models to accept high-liquidity collateral.
• Dynamic allocation & real-time accrual: Smart contracts continuously monitor market, ensuring full collateral for each loan; interest accrues per block automatically.

F. Sky USD Investment

This underlying asset is connected to the official savings system of the Sky protocol (formerly MakerDAO) and is widely regarded as a cornerstone earning solution in the DeFi stablecoin system.

Core Mechanism and advantages:

• Protocol surplus distribution: Revenue from US Treasuries and on-chain lending is distributed via SSR.
• Accumulating certificate: sUSDS automatically increases redeemable value over time.
• Stable, long-term allocation: Backed by real-world assets and mature DeFi risk management.

G. Ethena USDe Investment

The underlying source of this target is the Ethena protocol, which issues a “Synthetic Dollar”. This income plan does not rely on the traditional lending market but achieves stable rate income through precise hedging trading strategies.

Core Mechanism and advantages:

• Delta-Neutral strategy: Buy spot + sell futures to hedge price risk, earning funding rate.
• Multiple yield streams: Fee income + staking rewards from underlying Ethereum assets.

Note: Protocols have undergone multiple audits, but on-chain contracts still carry technical risk. Users should evaluate carefully.

3. Operation Overview

• Deposit BUSD
• Cross-chain conversion to the target protocol stablecoin
• Auto-deposit into Vault / contract / strategy pool
• Yield accrual
• Redeem
  • AAVE / Compound / Morpho / Sky: instant
  • Solana / Ethena: Approximately 10-day redemption cycle
• Automatic cross-chain conversion back to BUSD

For detailed steps, you can visit the BenPay DeFi Earn user guide.

BenPay DeFi Earn — Quick Overview of Stablecoin Yield Targets

The following table provides a quick comparison of the stablecoin yield strategies currently available through BenPay DeFi Earn.

*APY is indicative based on historical data; actual yields depend on real-time on-chain performance and are not guaranteed.

If you wish to uniformly manage the returns of stablecoins without frequently switching blockchains and protocols, you can participate in the above strategies in one stop through BenPay DeFi Earn. The entire process is on-chain transparent, and income is automatically compounded.

Summary

With **BenPay DeFi Earn, users can flexibly allocate between infrastructure type (AAVE/Compound), conservative (Sky / Morpho), strategic (Ethena), and composite strategic (Unitas) DeFi protocols according to their risk appetite. The entire process is on-chain transparent, cross-chain simplified, non-custodial, enabling participation without mastering complex DeFi operations.

Risk Notice: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. DeFi protocols carry smart contracts and market risks; users should evaluate independently before participation.