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January 15, 2026 – Saturn raised $800K from YZi Labs (EASY Residency Season 2), Sora Ventures, and a group of crypto angels to develop USDat, a Bitcoin-backed digital credit stablecoin. The protocol is built on Strategy’s STRC and aims to expand access to onchain credit infrastructure.
The creation of Digital Credit
In 2025, Strategy and Michael Saylor set their sights on the fixed-income market. The company introduced a framework intended to use Bitcoin as part of a broader credit structure, described as a new layer for digital credit applications.
“Our goal is to bring transparent yield to DeFi at a scale of billions of dollars. We are building the first application on Michael Saylor’s digital credit - a whole new platform layer, where banks, insurance, investing and money will be all reshaped,” said Kevin Li, Co-founder of Saturn. “We’re proud to have YZi Labs and Sora’s support from day one, and we will become the Tether of digital credit" Li added, “Today, yield is generated through a combination of Strategy’s STRC and U.S. Treasury bills.”
“Stablecoins are moving beyond simple payments toward yield-driven products, and few projects connect institutional credit with DeFi in a meaningful way,” said Jason Fang, Founder of Sora Ventures. “We backed Saturn because USDat is pioneering the first onchain use of Strategy’s credit products, and we believe it can redefine how institutional capital interacts with decentralized finance."
The Saturn team brings deep expertise across DATs, DeFi, and stablecoins, with engineering experience from Artemis, a leading blockchain data company focused on stablecoin and onchain analytics, and M31 Capital, a DeFi-focused venture and liquid fund. All founders are alumni of the University of Pennsylvania.
With support from YZi Labs and Sora Ventures, Saturn is well positioned for global market penetration and to become a dominant force in DeFi. Li notes that as Bitcoin evolves into a digital credit layer, Saturn is positioning its stablecoin infrastructure for potential deployment at multibillion-dollar scale.
