Noble: Solving Crypto's Liquidity Problem, One Chain at a Time - Jelena Djuric Ep619
Speakers
Sebastien Couture
General Partner at Interop Ventures
Jelena Djuric
Co-Founder of Noble
- •Stablecoin supercycle, anchored by policy: Regulatory momentum is catalyzing real payment use cases for stablecoins, which both speakers frame as the long-awaited path for blockchains to become financial rails.
- •Noble’s role as neutral plumbing: Noble positions itself as neutral, purpose-built infrastructure for minting, routing, and redeeming stablecoins across Cosmos and beyond, not as an issuer.
- •Composable yield as a design primitive: Noble Dollar (USDN) programmatically redirects T‑bill yield to any destination, enabling novel distribution, incentive, and revenue models without exotic risk.
- •Cosmos is infrastructure-strong, token-weak: The Cosmos stack remains a top choice for building sovereign app chains even as Cosmos-native token performance lags and value capture remains unresolved.
- •Strategic EVM L2 move: Noble will launch an EVM L2 with Celestia for data availability, secured by the Noble core PoA chain, to unlock DeFi and developer liquidity while keeping core mint/redeem stability.
- •Token utility centered on usage and governance: The Noble token will backstop fees on the app layer via a paymaster model and power governance, with a veNOBLE-style design rather than staking.
On Stablecoin Market, Hype vs. Durability
Sébastien Couture frames “stablecoin summer” with hard numbers: a $250-$275B market, roughly 45-50% year-to-date growth, and accelerating institutional appetite. He cites product shifts such as Paxos’ privacy-focused stablecoin, Circle exploring reversible transactions, and neobank launches riding this wave. Jelena Djuric argues this cycle differs because policy is finally enabling payments-grade infrastructure. She points to a recently enacted U.S. payments-stablecoin framework as the inflection point for legacy payment firms and crypto projects to innovate legally. While some claims about specific laws remain ambiguous, her core point stands: regulatory clarity is pushing stablecoins from trading tools to mainstream payment instruments.
On Yield and How It Actually Flows
Sébastien Couture presses on yield differentials and risk. Jelena explains most “floor” yield stems from short-term Treasuries. Under emerging U.S. rules, issuers generally cannot pass yield by default; distribution partners like exchanges or custodial platforms can pass through yield if structured compliantly. She flags that final “rules of the road” will depend on regulators such as the OCC. For Noble, the principle is neutrality: issuers determine yield sharing, while Noble provides rails that make yield distribution safe and programmable.
On Noble Dollar (USDN) and Composable Yield
Jelena outlines USDN as overcollateralized at about 103% with short-term Treasuries via M0, and engineered so the T‑bill yield is both programmatic and programmable. Distribution partners can redirect yield per block to validators, token buybacks, app incentives, or their own revenue. To showcase this, Noble ran a dual-vault campaign: a points vault that forfeited yield in exchange for points, and a boosted-yield vault that received the redirected yield. Because deposits skewed toward the points vault, the boosted-yield vault earned roughly 15-20% from pure redistribution of Treasury yield, not leverage or hidden strategies. The campaign peaked at roughly $125M across about 30,000 wallets, demonstrating product-market pull for yield composability.
On Cosmos
Health of the Stack vs. Value Capture: Responding to whether “Cosmos is dead,” Jelena separates performance of the stack from token prices. She highlights the maturity of CometBFT, the Cosmos SDK, CosmWasm, and IBC. Activity routing on Noble uses both IBC and external bridges like Circle’s CCTP, Wormhole, and Hyperlane. The broader challenge is value capture: like Linux and, to a degree, Ethereum’s rollup era, infrastructure success does not guarantee token appreciation. dYdX and prior Terra adoption show that value accrues to winning apps, not the stack by default. The strategic implication is to build real products with distribution and moats rather than relying on ecosystem spillover.
On Noble’s App Layer Architecture
Jelena details the Noble App Layer, an EVM L2 using Celestia for data availability and secured by the Noble core validator set. Benchmarking shows roughly 100-millisecond block times, faster than Noble core’s 1.2-few seconds. Noble chose an L2 over embedding EVM in the L1 because Cosmos-based EVM forks have been unevenly maintained, whereas aligning with Ethereum’s EVM ecosystem improves security and developer ergonomics. The design aligns with a “native rollup” direction while keeping Noble core as a proof-of-authority chain optimized for stablecoin-centric mint/redeem reliability.
On Noble Token
Jelena says the Noble token will serve as the base fee token for the app layer through a paymaster mechanism that lets users pay fees in stablecoins while swapping to Noble under the hood. Governance will be the second pillar. With PoA remaining at the core, staking is unlikely. Instead, a veNOBLE-style model could direct incentives, liquidity, and “bribe”-like emissions to critical pools and apps. The token’s value therefore links to app-layer usage and to governance that steers yield redirection and liquidity programs.
On Outlook and Noble’s Positioning
Both see the total addressable market for stablecoins growing sharply, with bank and fintech demand for modern rails. Jelena expects specialization among stablecoin infrastructures to serve distinct payment segments across B2C and enterprise. Noble aims to be the origin and routing layer for mint and redemption, while the app layer targets consumer-facing experiences that can leverage programmable yield to bootstrap and sustain adoption.
- →Track U.S. and global stablecoin rulemaking that defines whether issuers or distributors can pass through yield and under what conditions.
- →Monitor Noble’s EVM L2 launch, fee-paymaster design, and initial DeFi apps as leading indicators of developer adoption and token utility.
- →Watch growth in programmable-yield use cases as a competitive wedge in stablecoin distribution, especially where distribution partners control yield redirection.