Gate News message, April 16 — Sky, the decentralized finance protocol formerly known as MakerDAO, announced the first native deployment of its stablecoin USDS and yield-bearing version Savings USDS (sUSDS) on Avalanche on April 13.
The deployment operates through Skylink, Sky's crosschain bridge protocol built on LayerZero infrastructure. Unlike traditional bridges, Skylink uses a burn-and-mint framework that requires no bridge liquidity. Grove Finance became the first entity to transfer USDS and sUSDS from Ethereum mainnet to Avalanche via Skylink. The bridge launched with a daily transfer cap of 5 million in either direction, set by Sky governance, with limits scheduled to increase to their final capacity on April 27. Native USDS-to-sUSDS conversions directly on Avalanche are expected later in Q2 2026.
Avalanche currently holds just over $756 million in total value locked in DeFi, making it the 12th-largest chain by DeFi TVL, according to DefiLlama, while Ethereum leads with over $58 billion. In a separate collaboration, Grove announced yesterday that it received 25 million USDS from the Sky ecosystem as part of its Agent Network allocations.
The timing coincides with Bitwise's launch of its Avalanche ETF (BAVA) on NYSE Arca on April 15, offering regulated AVAX exposure with in-house staking. USDS is the successor to DAI, the protocol's long-running decentralized stablecoin, introduced as part of Sky's "Endgame" overhaul.
