Overview
RealFi is a stablecoin platform that lets people hold a digital dollar backed by loans, bonds, and Treasury bills, and earn a share of the income those assets produce. Its base token, USDrf, is designed to stay worth one US dollar, while the staked version, sUSDrf, grows in value as reserve income comes in1. Holders pick the token that fits them: a steady dollar for payments and trading, or a staked position for returns1.
RealFi went live on Cardano mainnet, the live network that uses real funds rather than test tokens, on October 1, 2026, with SundaeSwap, Lace, and Liqwid Finance named as launch partners2. USDrf was called USDr until a community vote renamed it3. Input Output, the engineering and research company behind Cardano, lists RealFi among its products4. A Cayman Islands foundation governs the protocol, and separate British Virgin Islands companies issue each token5.
Key Features
- A digital dollar backed by traditional finance. RealFi backs USDrf one-to-one with a reserve of real-world assets: U.S. Treasury bills and money market funds, plus floating-rate corporate credit, meaning company debt whose interest rate adjusts with market rates, and short-term secured business loans6.
- Returns that build up inside the token. Staking USDrf gives you sUSDrf, and your token count never changes. Each sUSDrf instead redeems for more USDrf because, as borrowers repay, RealFi mints (creates) new USDrf and adds it to the staking vault in weekly rounds7.
- A set order for absorbing losses. If RealFi's portfolio of real-world assets loses money, the loss goes first to RealFi's own first-loss reserve, a reserve the protocol holds to cover losses, then to the staked sUSDrf pool, before any USDrf holder is affected8.
- Several ways to hold the one-dollar price. A peg stability module rewards traders for pushing USDrf back toward $1.00, and a separate stability fund can buy USDrf on the market and burn it, meaning remove it from supply for good9.
- Reserves you can inspect. RealFi's Transparency Portal shows what backs USDrf, including the reserve mix and collateralization ratios, which compare the value of the assets held with the USDrf in circulation10.
What to Expect
Everyday users open the RealFi app, connect a Cardano wallet, and swap a dollar stablecoin for USDrf. Access to USDrf and sUSDrf depends on passing RealFi's identity checks (known as KYC), which include approving your wallet address11. From there you can stake USDrf for sUSDrf, or unstake to switch back12. Unstaking comes with a seven-day cooldown before the USDrf can be claimed13. The RealFi FAQ lists Lace, Eternl, Trezor, and Ledger as the wallets supported at launch, with more to follow14.
USDrf and sUSDrf also work outside the RealFi app. Liqwid Finance, a Cardano lending protocol, added markets where people can supply USDrf or post sUSDrf as collateral to borrow15. Activity like this earns R-Points during RealFi's rewards seasons, the first of which is Voyager Season16. R-Points have no cash value and give no right to RFG, RealFi's governance token; any conversion of points into RFG depends on a separate decision by RealFi17.
Verified institutions and market makers, firms that keep tokens available for others to trade, have their own path: they can mint new USDrf directly or redeem it for the underlying value12. Redemptions run through a first-in, first-out queue that RealFi staff approve, with daily and monthly limits14. Everyday users who want to leave sell USDrf on a decentralized exchange instead14. Behind both paths, RealFi keeps liquid assets covering at least 120% of the redemptions it expects over seven days7.
