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Deploy Finance vs Sky Savings: a governance-set rate or a market-paid one?

Sky Savings and Deploy Finance both offer a place to park dollars onchain and earn without a custodian. Sky pays a savings rate on USDS that its governance sets and funds from protocol revenue. Deploy runs an agent in your own wallet that collects funding paid by leveraged traders on a perpetual exchange.

The overlap is passive, self-custodied dollar income. The asymmetry is who sets the rate and who pays it. Sky's rate is a policy decision, backed by whatever the protocol earns. Deploy's return is a market price, paid every funding interval by traders who want leverage.

Compare Sky Savings and Deploy Finance​

Sky SavingsDeploy Finance
Product modelSavings module: deposit USDS, receive sUSDS, accrue the Sky Savings RateCurated autonomous agents that trade from a self-custodial wallet
User actionAcquire USDS, deposit into the savings contract, hold sUSDSFund a wallet, select an agent and allocation, approve scoped trading access
Who sets the returnSky governance votes the Sky Savings Rate up or downThe market; funding is whatever leveraged traders pay at each interval
Return sourceProtocol revenue: stability fees from borrowers, yield on reserve assets, and other allocationsPerpetual funding spreads (Income: Funding Rates) or directional price moves (Superstar)
What you holdsUSDS, a transferable ERC-4626 token redeemable for USDS plus accrued savingsUSDC in your own wallet, which the agent deploys into a position
ExitRedeem sUSDS for USDS at the contract at any time, then swap USDS if you want USDCNo fixed lock-up documented; revoke access, exit the strategy, withdraw to your own address
AccessContracts are permissionless; the sky.money front end restricts some jurisdictionsEmail or Google sign-in; no accreditation requirement documented
Best fitUsers who want a simple, governance-managed savings rate on a stablecoin they already holdUsers who want a market-derived return and are willing to take strategy risk to earn it

What is Sky Savings?​

Sky is the protocol formerly known as MakerDAO. Its stablecoin USDS is the successor to DAI, and the Sky Savings Rate is the successor to the DAI Savings Rate. Depositing USDS into the savings module mints sUSDS, which grows in redemption value as the rate accrues.

How Sky Savings works​

  • You acquire USDS, deposit it into the savings contract, and receive sUSDS. There is no lock-up; sUSDS can be redeemed for USDS at any time.
  • The Sky Savings Rate is set by governance vote. It moves when governance decides it should, not when market conditions change on their own.
  • The rate is paid from protocol revenue: stability fees paid by borrowers who mint USDS against collateral, yield on reserve assets such as tokenized Treasuries, and other allocations governance approves.
  • sUSDS is an ERC-4626 token. It is transferable and widely accepted as collateral across DeFi.
  • USDS includes a governance-controlled freeze function, which is one of the differences from DAI that governance introduced with the upgrade.

The rate is stable in the sense that it changes only by vote. It is not fixed, and it is not derived from what any single market is paying at a given moment.

Deploy Finance: a rate the market sets​

Deploy Finance runs autonomous trading agents funded and settled in USDC, held per user rather than pooled. The live agents are Income: Funding Rates and Superstar.

Deploy Finance's live features​

  • Income: Funding Rates: a market-neutral agent that holds a delta-neutral position, long the asset and short its perpetual on Hyperliquid, and collects the funding leveraged traders pay. The agent manages the hedge autonomously.
  • Superstar: a directional agent that takes long or short positions on large-cap perpetuals under its defined strategy.
  • Self-custodial agent wallet: your USDC stays in a wallet you control. The agent receives a scoped, revocable session key that can trade on whitelisted venues and cannot transfer or withdraw funds.

Sky's rate comes from a treasury; Deploy's comes from a market. When leverage demand is high, funding is high and Income: Funding Rates earns more. When leverage demand fades, funding compresses and can turn negative, and the agent earns less or steps out. Sky's rate does not respond to that cycle. It responds to governance, which weighs protocol revenue, USDS demand, and competing rates.

Both models are honest about what they are. One is a policy rate with a revenue base behind it. The other is a trading strategy with a market behind it.

You sign in with email or Google, fund the wallet with USDC, choose an agent, and approve the trading permission.

When should you choose Deploy Finance or Sky Savings?​

Choose Deploy Finance when:

  • You want a return that tracks what perpetual traders are currently paying, rather than a rate set by vote.
  • You want to hold USDC directly instead of acquiring USDS and holding sUSDS.
  • You want your capital to earn through a defined strategy in your own wallet, and you accept strategy risk to do it.
  • You want a directional option alongside the market-neutral one.

Choose Sky Savings when:

  • You want the simplest possible savings position: deposit, hold, redeem.
  • You prefer a rate that changes only by governance decision, with a protocol revenue base behind it.
  • You want a transferable token you can post as collateral or move across DeFi.
  • You do not want trading, hedging, or venue exposure of any kind.

Policy rate or market rate: Sky pays a governance-set rate from protocol revenue. Deploy Finance collects a market rate from perpetual traders. No integration between the products is implied.

Risks on each side​

Sky Savings exposes you to governance decisions that lower the rate or change the token's rules, to the freeze function, to the credit and reserve risk of the collateral and real-world assets backing USDS, to smart-contract risk, and to USDS liquidity when you swap back to USDC.

Deploy Finance exposes you to funding compression or reversal, hedge slippage, liquidation risk on the perpetual leg, Hyperliquid venue risk, wallet-infrastructure risk, and delegated-execution risk. A delta-neutral objective reduces directional exposure; it does not remove any of these.

Two ways to use Deploy Finance​

Income: Funding Rates

Choose this agent if you want a market-paid return on USDC instead of a governance-set one on USDS.

Superstar

Choose this agent for directional exposure, which a savings module does not offer.

Learn more​

Start with Deploy Finance​

Create a self-custodial Deploy Finance wallet and review the live agents.