Level Announces Official Debut of its DeFi Yield Stablecoin, Raises Additional $2.6M from Dragonfly to Unlock Permissionless Finance

Level's lvlUSD, Powered by 100% DeFi Yield, Rapidly Grows to Over $80M Market Cap in Five Months of Beta

NEW YORK, March 18, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Peregrine Exploration, a blockchain development and research company, today announced the official debut of Level USD (lvlUSD), an innovative stablecoin with DeFi-native yield, and an additional $2.6 million in strategic funding led by repeat investor, Dragonfly, to accelerate its mission to unlock permissionless finance. Polychain also participated again, along with new investors, including Flowdesk, Echo syndicates Native Crypto (formerly known as Comfy Capital) and Feisty Collective by Path, and angel investors Sam Kazemian (Frax) and Albert Chon (Injective). The company has now raised a total of over $6 million.

Unlike most other new stablecoins that rely on centralized yield sources such as treasuries or CEX basis trades, Level generates yield for its stablecoin exclusively from DeFi. Since its beta launch in Q4 2024, Level has rapidly expanded, growing lvlUSD's market capitalization to over $80 million and total protocol TVL to $96 million within just five months, with over 10,000 institutional and retail users.

With yield that has consistently outperformed other major yield-bearing stablecoin competitors over the past three months, and a relatively low-risk profile, Level is well-positioned for exponential growth as DeFi yield becomes increasingly scalable, sustainable, and secure.

Most new stablecoin projects are tokenizing centralized yields, limiting users to opaque, off-chain mechanisms. In contrast, lvlUSD seeks to deliver superior risk-adjusted returns with full on-chain transparency. Level dramatically minimizes counterparty and operational risk by relying on decentralized sources of yield with excellent track records of reliability, and automating reserve management with audited and open-sourced smart contracts.

Level's lvlUSD is fully collateralized by fiat-backed stablecoins such as USDC and USDT, which are supplied on blue-chip lending protocols like Aave to generate yield. In the coming weeks, Level will also start earning yield on Morpho. To expand its utility and scale, lvlUSD is already integrated with tier-1 DeFi protocols, including Pendle, Spectra and LayerZero, and can be used as collateral on Morpho.

"As DeFi yield becomes increasingly reliable and institutional interest in on-chain finance surges, Level is positioned to be the stablecoin that fully embraces and scales DeFi-native opportunities," said Kedian Sun, co-founder of Level. "With integrations across the most robust DeFi protocols, Level is an innovative stablecoin designed to provide sustainable, on-chain yield, and minimize the centralized counterparty and operational risk faced by many competitors."

Over the past year, DeFi-native yield has evolved into a highly reliable, scalable and institutional-grade financial sector:

• Lending and yield tokenization protocols have achieved exponential growth, demonstrating the robustness of decentralized yield.
• TradFi and institutional players are entering DeFi — showing strong interest in yield-bearing stablecoins, crypto-backed loans, and yield tokenization, reinforcing the long-term viability of DeFi-native yield strategies.

"We've backed the Level team since their early days and are thrilled to double down in this strategic round," said Tom Schmidt, general partner at Dragonfly. "Level's rapid growth and deep integrations highlight the strength of their approach to stablecoin yield generation through DeFi-native sources, and their ability to execute at a high level. As stablecoins continue to anchor the crypto ecosystem, we believe Level is well-positioned to drive the next phase of on-chain finance."

"Since our initial investment, we've been consistently impressed by Level's innovation in the stablecoin space," said Sven Wellmann, Researcher at Polychain. "Their fully on-chain, transparent approach to yield generation sets them apart from competitors relying on opaque, centralized methods. We're excited to continue supporting Level as they define the standard for secure, DeFi-native yield solutions."

About Level

Level is a decentralized stablecoin protocol powered by DeFi-native yield, available to non-US users. Level unlocks permissionless finance by offering sustainable, scalable on-chain financial opportunities. For more information, visit level.money or reach out to the Level team at [email protected].

This statement does not constitute an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to purchase, any security or other financial product and may not be relied upon by you in evaluating the merits of investing in any financial product or the actual return on an investment in any financial product. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

Media Contact:
Eric Doyle, CodePR
[email protected]

SOURCE Level