Alpha Recap #10: JupUSD Launch, Pendle Opportunity and Superchain Buybacks

The Alpha Recap aims to highlight the most important crypto market Alphas of the week. Every Friday, we provide a condensed overview of the most valuable information from our Alpha Feed.

Reserved for OAK Premium members, the Alpha Feed aggregates insights, yield and airdrop strategies, as well as key market information. In short, what defines OAK Research’s DNA: delivering curated content that goes beyond market noise.

Jupiter Launches JupUSD, Its Native Stablecoin Based on Ethena’s Whitelabel

This week, Jupiter officially launched JupUSD, its native stablecoin developed using Ethena’s Whitelabel solution. The ambition is clear: make JupUSD a transversal asset within the Jupiter ecosystem, progressively integrated into the DEX, Jupiter Lend, derivatives products, the JLP and, eventually, prediction markets.

In this context, Ethena plans for JupUSD to fully replace USDC within the JLP, representing nearly $500 million in liquidity currently used as a backstop for leveraged trading.

Structurally, JupUSD is collateralized at 90% by Ethena’s USDtb, whose underlying exposure relies on the BUIDL fund and generates yield. This yield is not redistributed directly to stablecoin holders, but reinjected into the Jupiter ecosystem, potentially representing around $16 million in additional annual revenue.

Users wishing to capture this yield can nevertheless deposit their JupUSD on Jupiter Lend to obtain jlJupUSD, the productive version of the stablecoin, which currently offers an annualized yield of approximately 6.35%.

→ (Re)read our analysis on Ethena’s Whitelabel and the end of value leakage from stablecoins:

An Arbitrage Opportunity on Strata’s YT jrUSDe on Pendle

The YT jrUSDe market on Pendle expires on January 15, 2026, in about six days. At the same time, a new market has recently opened with a longer maturity, set for April 2, 2026. It is precisely during this transition window between the two markets that an interesting arbitrage opportunity emerges.

Historically, on the January 15, 2026 market, YT jrUSDe has traded within a range between 11.2% and 17%. The rare periods during which the YT price fell below the actual jrUSDe yield have consistently led to a rebalancing.

At present, the situation is as follows:
• YT jrUSDe 15 JAN 2026 trades around 13.34%,
• YT jrUSDe 02 APR 2026 trades at only 11.39%,
• while the underlying jrUSDe yield is estimated by the market at around 12.2%.

In practice, this reflects two markets pricing very different assumptions about the real jrUSDe yield. One values it at 13.34%, the other at 11.39%. Admittedly, the maturities differ, but there is no indication that jrUSDe yields are set to decline meaningfully in the coming weeks.

In other words, the YT jrUSDe on the April 2, 2026 maturity is trading not only below the January 15, 2026 market, but also below the effective yield of the underlying asset. A historically rare configuration, often synonymous with opportunity.

In a dedicated Alpha, we detailed a simple strategy to take advantage of this inefficiency, both to capture attractive yield and to strategically accumulate Strata points.

→ Why is Pendle your best tool to farm airdrops?

Optimism Proposes Activating Buybacks Across the Entire Superchain

The Optimism Foundation has in turn aligned with the fee switch thesis, proposing to allocate 50% of revenues generated by the entire Superchain to buybacks of the OP token.

As a reminder, the Superchain groups Layer 2s deployed via the OP Stack. This interoperable ecosystem, with shared governance and security, currently captures nearly 59% of total Layer 2 activity.

At present, Layer 2s integrated into the Superchain remit part of their sequencer fees to Optimism. Over the past twelve months, these flows amounted to 5,868 ETH, or approximately $18.1 million. Until now, all of these revenues were allocated to ecosystem development.

Today, OP primarily serves governance and incentive functions, without a direct economic anchor, on top of downward pressure stemming from ongoing token unlocks.

The introduction of buybacks therefore aims to reinject part of the Superchain’s revenues into the token that nonetheless constitutes its common financial base.

Whether this will be sufficient remains an open question. The OP token currently attracts little investor interest, casting doubt on the real impact of the measure. That said, the relevance of the fee switch for a project like the Superchain is clearly a factor worth considering and contextualizing.

Voting will begin on January 22.

→ Read our analysis on the fee switch thesis. Published in December 2024, it has proven prescient:

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