Arrakis Finance, an on-chain liquidity protocol, has released a study tracking purchase records for 10 tokenized dollar yield products, with Ethena’s sUSDe used as a reference point. The research covered 71,697 buyers and $91.3 billion in total purchase volume.
Protocol and DAO treasuries made up most identifiable demand
Within the $12.4 billion in demand that could be classified, about two-thirds came from protocol and DAO treasuries. The remainder came from individuals, exchanges, market makers, and crypto funds. The study said it did not identify purchases that could be clearly traced to traditional financial institutions such as pension funds, asset managers, or banks.
Large buyers accounted for most of the capital. Wallets making purchases of $1 million or more represented about 4% of buyers, yet held roughly 93% of the funds. In total, 2,586 buyers contributed more than 90% of notional purchase volume.
USDC dominated settlement, while primary subscriptions remained the main route
About 80% of purchases, equal to a combined $17.4 billion, were settled in USDC. USDT accounted for about $4.4 billion and was used almost entirely for syrupUSDT.
Primary subscriptions were the main acquisition path. Secondary-market purchases made up less than 6% of the total. Among the products tracked, only sUSDe saw 55% of acquisitions come through decentralized exchanges.
JAAA posted the highest median institutional ticket size
For Centrifuge’s JAAA, the median purchase size among institutional buyers was about $29.1 million, nearly three times that of the next product in the dataset.
The median first activity date for buyer wallets clustered around mid-2024. The study described this cohort as newly entering crypto-native capital.
Regional split and two-hop source tracing
By time zone, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa accounted for 42% of buyers, Asia-Pacific represented 40%, and the Americas made up 18%.
Arrakis also traced $5.17 billion in unlabeled institutional-scale funds by looking two hops back. Exchange-sourced funds accounted for 40%, including $1.12 billion from Binance and $970 million from Coinbase. DeFi-native capital represented 38%, while 22% could not be identified.