‘Chain agnostic’ M^0 stablecoin middleware platform expands to Solana, teams with KAST neo-bank on latest M token extension

M^0, the stablecoin development platform, is expanding to Solana, marking a significant step in bringing customizable, interoperable digital dollars to one of the fastest-growing blockchain ecosystems. KAST, a “neobank” that uses stablecoins, will be the first to use M^0’s new Solana-based infrastructure to launch a brand-specific stablecoin project.

“This marks a significant milestone in M^0’s roadmap, reinforcing its commitment to providing builders with the most programmable stablecoin issuance infrastructure, wherever they are,” the team wrote in a press release on Tuesday.

The move comes after a year of rocketing growth for Solana, a scalable blockchain geared for smart contracts and decentralized applications. Over the past year, Solana gained comparatively more users, developers and capital than any other chain in a remarkable comeback story following the collapse of FTX, which the network was closely associated with.

“The Ethereum virtual machine has a larger share of developer attention and network effects,” M^0 Chief Strategy Officer João Reginatto told The Block in a message. “But Solana obviously has an extremely thriving developer and end-user community, which when combined with the scalability of the network makes it one of the most interesting ecosystems to bring digital dollar innovation to.”

M^0, pronounced “M-Zero,” launched on the Ethereum mainnet in mid-2024. The platform offers a “stablecoin building block” called M, which is used to launch branded stablecoins that share liquidity and can be bridged to other parts of the ecosystem via the Wormhole bridge. The ecosystem recently passed $160 million in circulating supply.

In other words, M^0 is essentially a middleware platform for creating customizable “extensions” of the M digital dollar, which maintains a peg via its U.S. Treasury bonds.

KASTing a wider net

KAST, which offers payment cards and USD-denominated accounts to people in over 150 countries, follows issuers like Usual and Noble in launching an M-based product. The “banking alternative” will build two digital dollars — one designed initially to tokenize customer deposits that could expand into payments later and another for “savings use cases.”

It’s unclear if KAST’s M-based “savings token” follows the model of something like “savings USDS,” where users deposit USDS stablecoins into the Sky Savings Rate module to earn yield while receiving sUSDS as a tokenized representation of their locked assets. Reginatto noted, however, “there is no need to architect complex staking solutions” on M0.

“M^0 makes it extremely easy for builders to leverage different flavors of stablecoins and integrate them into one’s use case,” Reginatto said, adding this includes the “configuration of yield distribution, and whether specific portions of it should go to holders versus to the distribution / use case owner. All of this can be easily codified onchain and executed on every tick of the blockchain.”

“Yield is one of the properties that can be customized, but imagine that at scale this means a bespoke digital dollar can be built for every use case, for every situation, however small or temporary it is,” Reginatto added.” This commoditization of money technology, with on-chain coordination instead of centralized with a single intermediary, changes the game for the future of fintech.”

Cross-chain capabilities

Although M0 is “blockchain agnostic,” Reginatto confirmed that the M0 governance module will continue to “live” on Ethereum, which will maintain “a single record of network configuration and permissioned actors” as well as the “minter gateway.” The platform uses Wormhole as a messaging gateway to alternative network “minting or burning is required there.”

That said, individual implementations of the network on chains like Solana and Cosmos will independently manage liquidity and calculate chain-specific yield distribution.

“All these chain specific components need to be built specifically when M^0 expands to another blockchain, ensuring that for developers the capabilities are ultimately the same on every chain, and there is an ability to seamlessly move assets across them,” Reginatto said.

In June 2024, M0 announced a $35 million in a Series A funding round led by Bain Capital with Crypto participation from market makers Galaxy Ventures, Wintermute Ventures, GSR and Caladan.

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