by
Victoria d’Este

Published: May 16, 2025 at 11:11 am Updated: May 16, 2025 at 1:40 pm

by Ana

Edited and fact-checked:
May 16, 2025 at 11:11 am

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What if you could get leverage without borrowing costs, and stay fully on-chain with minimal risk? In this interview, Cyrille Brière, contributor at f(x)Protocol, explains how the project is answering those questions with products like fxSAVE and fxUSD, while paving a path for scalable, decentralized finance without relying on traditional systems.

Can you share your journey into Web3? 

I bought my first crypto in 2017. I saw them explode at the end of the year and then lose a lot of value in early 2018. I kind of lost track of it and went back to crypto during DeFi summer. I was really interested in DeFi at first to make a yield on stablecoins because I wasn’t very comfortable with volatility. I wanted to make a yield with stablecoins.

So that’s what I did during DeFi summer, and there were some pretty crazy yields at that time. And by doing so, I fell in love with the DeFi ethics. I loved the paradigm shift—owning your assets and being responsible for them. That sense of responsibility is something I liked a lot.

And just how exciting the whole ecosystem is, thanks to being permissionless, and how anyone can build on top of anyone. I love that. There’s always new stuff coming, more efficient things, better yields, lower risk—it’s very exciting. That’s how I got into DeFi.

I also started being involved with a group called DeFi France—because, as you might hear, I’m from France. I contributed by organizing meetups about DeFi in France, and that’s how I got involved and started contributing to DeFi protocols too.

What inspired the creation of f(x)Protocol, and what problems is it trying to solve?

First, I should say—I didn’t create f(x)Protocol. I joined the project later as a contributor. But what inspired it in the first place was the USDC depeg in 2023—if I recall correctly—due to the crash of Silicon Valley Bank.

At that point, there just weren’t many options at the time. That’s when the idea came to create something new. f(x) was born from that. It brings a new approach to the stablecoin problem—a very capital-efficient stablecoin that is truly decentralized, mostly exposed to decentralized assets.

How can fxSAVE be positioned as the go-to DeFi savings product for stablecoin holders?

I believe it already is. I don’t know if I shared the link to stableyields.info in the document I made for you, but if you look at it, fxSAVE is the number one yield among stablecoin strategies. 

You can see fxSAVE has the best yield, better than many others. So, how is it the go-to? Because it’s a stablecoin that earns. The key with fxSAVE is that the yield is organic. It’s not just a high yield—it’s sustainable. It comes only from the revenue generated by the protocol.

No token inflation. No fancy points programs that create fake incentives. It’s just a sustainable protocol that earns profit and distributes it to the stable stakers and token holders.

What strategies could attract traditional finance users to fxUSD and Expositions?

For fxUSD, it’s about having a strong risk-reward ratio. TradFi investors, and really any investor, are looking for that. Being exposed to a decentralized stablecoin means you don’t rely on any person or company. You don’t need to trust anyone—everything is on-chain, and you can track it all the time. You can even automate stuff to stay safe.

So using fxUSD is a no-brainer, in terms of risk. We’re able to deliver very competitive yields, and it’s all on-chain. That means better yield, lower risk.

As for xPOSITIONs, what we offer is capital efficiency. You can leverage your ETH or BTC without borrowing or funding costs. Just a one-time opening fee, one-time closing fee. That’s it.

This is great for BTC miners, for example—they have big BTC exposure and don’t want to sell. They might need capital but still want to keep their BTC. The same goes for ETH whales, protocols, and so on. If you want to stay exposed at a minimal cost, you can use f(x).

How can the protocol incentivize long-term engagement without gamification or point systems?

We don’t do the gamified stuff. We have a token and emissions, and users can choose if they want to earn real yield or emissions. But we don’t need tricks to attract TVL. It’s been growing steadily.

Our focus is on sustainable and organic development. But, there is a kind of long-term engagement built in through tokenomics. We have veTokenomics, which is similar to Curve or Pendle. So basically, you can boost your yield by locking tokens for longer.

What are the risks of expanding collateral types beyond staked ETH, and how are they mitigated?

We not only take staked ETH but also Wrapped BTC. But we’re actually not planning to add more collateral right now. Wrapped BTC already feels like a compromise. We’d rather have a more decentralized Bitcoin version—like tBTC, for instance—but it’s not liquid enough yet.

We want fxUSD to be as resilient as possible, so we’re keeping it simple for now. Though, on BASE—which is less decentralized by design—we might explore more exotic collaterals. That depends on liquidity. We need to make sure prices can’t be manipulated.

What are the opportunities for cross-chain expansion, like Arbitrum or Optimism?

There are lots of opportunities. But again, we’re a small team—we can’t be everywhere. The next step for us is launching on BASE. That should happen in a couple of weeks.

BASE will allow for higher leverage. Right now, on mainnet, users can go up to 7x leverage with minimal liquidation risk and no funding costs. On BASE, we could go even higher and maybe add new collateral too.

We’re not planning to deploy on other chains ourselves right now, but we’re happy to see others fork f(x). One serious team is working on a fork of BNB Chain using Lista BNB as collateral. It looks promising, especially since the collateral yield is high.

What kinds of new financial products could be built on top of f(x)Protocol?

Honestly, the potential is huge. I probably can’t even imagine everything that’s possible. But for sure there are opportunities for rate arbitrage, since we offer leverage without borrowing costs.

You could carry trades using f(x) for low-cost exposure instead of holding a spot. There are protocols already using FXUSD, especially the steady yield strategies. Other stablecoin projects are integrating FX into their own systems, too.

How will RWAs reshape DeFi, and what role can f(x)Protocol play?

RWAs are bringing traditional assets on-chain and changing how stablecoins work. A lot of them are backed by off-chain assets like T-bills. That creates reliance on human factors, on companies we don’t know, regulated in ways we don’t fully understand. And at some point, that trust breaks. It always does.

That gives us a way to stand out. But there’s synergy too—RWA projects can benefit from on-chain yield through f(x). Still, we show that you don’t need RWAs to create sustainable, scalable stablecoins. That’s the whole idea—f(x) challenges the belief that decentralized stablecoins can’t scale.

What role will AI play in DeFi, particularly for protocols like yours?

We strongly believe AI will play a bigger and bigger role, not in moving funds, but in making investment decisions. As more AI agents allocate capital, they’ll naturally lean toward f(x). Why? Because we offer low risk and high yield.

Humans lose money mostly due to emotion. AIs don’t have that problem. They’ll just choose the best risk-reward setups—and that’s what f(x) delivers. It’s on-chain, reliable, and consistent. Most of the other “yield-bearing” stablecoins still depend on centralized asset managers or opaque strategies. It’s a no-brainer that AI will choose f(x).

What trends are you seeing in decentralized stablecoins?

RWA-backed stablecoins are huge right now. Also, we’re seeing more and more wrappers—tokens that wrap other stablecoins and call themselves yield-bearing. I think these protocols will help grow fxUSD’s TVL, because we offer a sustainable yield with low risk. Everything’s on-chain, and they can pull out anytime if something feels off.

Finally, can you share the roadmap for f(x)Protocol?

We just launched fxSAVE two weeks ago—it’s the tokenized stability pool. It has already received $22 million in TVL and is growing well. We also just got listed on Pendle and Morpho.

Next up is the BASE deployment. After that, we’re adding new features—limit orders and shorting options for ETH and BTC, since we only support long leverage (up to 7x) right now. We also want to let users mint the stablecoin directly and use the protocol like a regular CTP. That’s what’s coming soon.

About The Author

Victoria is a writer on a variety of technology topics including Web3.0, AI and cryptocurrencies. Her extensive experience allows her to write insightful articles for the wider audience.

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Victoria d’Este