February 12th, 2026 – George Town, Cayman Islands
The Decibel Foundation today announced USDCBL, a U.S. dollar–denominated, protocol-native stablecoin designed to serve as the default collateral asset within the Decibel protocol’s trading environment.
USDCBL will be issued by stablecoin infrastructure provider Bridge, a Stripe company.
Decibel is a fully decentralized exchange built for speed, scale, and composability, incubated by Aptos Labs in partnership with the Decibel Foundation. It will initially support perpetuals trading through a single cross-margin account, with all order matching and settlement occurring fully onchain. The decentralized exchange opened its testnet phase in December 2025 and has scaled to more than 650,000 unique accounts, over 100,000 daily active accounts, and 1 million daily user trades.
USDCBL is being launched to address a structural challenge in decentralized exchanges: economic value generated by stablecoin collateral is often captured by third-party providers rather than returned to the protocol itself. This dynamic forces some decentralized exchanges to rely more heavily on higher trading fees or programs to incentivize activity. As a protocol-native stablecoin, USDCBL is designed to keep value within the protocol, enabling structurally lower trading fees, flexibility for future token-aligned mechanisms, a more durable growth model, and a simplified trading experience with unified collateral.
“Crypto’s promise has always been about reducing extractive layers and returning value to the people actually using these systems,” said Brylee Whatley, Head of Decibel Foundation. “With USDCBL, Decibel is being launched with that directly into the protocol’s infrastructure, enabling user-centric economics that improve with adoption rather than hinder it, maintaining the deep liquidity and performance traders depend on, all while keeping the familiar feel of dollar-denominated markets.”
Decibel will launch USDCBL through Bridge’s Open Issuance platform. Open Issuance enabled Decibel to launch and distribute their own fully collateralized, U.S. dollar-denominated stablecoin with customized reserves, built-in liquidity mechanisms, and the ability for users to on and offramp USDCBL seamlessly. At mainnet, users will deposit USDC into the exchange, which they will convert to USDCBL. Balances will remain dollar-denominated and fully backed throughout the process.
With USDCBL serving as Decibel’s default collateral asset, Decibel’s trading experience remains unchanged, but economic value is kept within the protocol. As protocol usage grows, USDCBL usage will grow alongside it, allowing the stablecoin to scale with activity rather than relying on fee increases or incentive programs.
Decibel is expected to launch on mainnet in February 2026, offering a fully onchain perpetual trading venue. Spot and real-world asset trading are expected to launch in 2026. Pre-deposits are now open, allowing traders to fund accounts in advance of mainnet launch. To participate, users can visit app.decibel.trade/pre-deposits.
About Decibel
Decibel is a fully decentralized exchange incubated by Aptos Labs in partnership with the Decibel Foundation, built for speed, scale, and composability. The platform supports perpetuals trading through a unified cross-margin account, with all order matching and settlement occurring entirely onchain. Decibel is designed to deliver high-performance execution while supporting transparency and self-custody.
About Decibel Foundation
The Decibel Foundation is dedicated to advancing the Decibel Protocol, a decentralized non-custodial trading engine designed for high-performance, full-stack trading of perpetuals and spot digital assets. The Decibel Foundation supports protocol development, governance, and ecosystem growth to drive the future of onchain capital markets.
About Bridge, a Stripe company
Bridge is the leading platform for stablecoin issuance and orchestration, simplifying the ability for users to transact on crypto rails by abstracting away the complexities of using blockchains. Bridge builds stablecoin infrastructure that enables users to seamlessly transition between fiat currency and stablecoins, helping global businesses manage, store, and move money. Bridge was acquired by Stripe in February 2025.
About Aptos Network
Aptos is a high-performance proof-of-stake layer-one blockchain. Aptos’ breakthrough technology, scalable infrastructure and user safeguards are designed to power the next generation of financial systems by offering unparalleled high throughput and low latency that can scale to billions of users.
Contact
Cameron Crowe
Aptos Labs
[email protected]
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