Clarity Act could usher in a new era of crypto ‘yield-as-a-service’

The Clarity Act’s biggest outcome may be the creation of an entirely new market for “yield-as-a-service,” according to Joe Vollono, chief commercial officer at stablecoin infrastructure firm STBL.

At the center of the debate is Section 404 of the proposed legislation, which would prohibit Digital Asset Service Providers (DASPs) and their affiliates from offering yield solely as a function of holding a digital asset.

The provision could fundamentally reshape how crypto users earn returns, pushing the market away from passive “hold-to-earn” products and toward more active, compliant yield-generation strategies.

“What this effectively does is shift the industry from a hold-to-earn market to a use-to-earn market,” Vollono told CoinDesk in an interview. “You’re going to need compliant yield strategies to generate rewards on what would otherwise be idle capital.”

The Clarity Act has already cleared the Senate Banking Committee and is now expected to move into the full Senate to be merged with the Senate Agriculture Committee version of the bill before House reconciliation, with an optimistic timeline pointing to a full vote as early as July. Regulators would then have roughly 12 months to implement the framework.

Vollono, who spent more than seven years at Morgan Stanley and served at SIFMA, where he worked on industry advocacy and market structure issues, said the implications of the Clarity Act extend far beyond yield products themselves. Regulatory clarity, he argued, could finally unlock large-scale institutional participation in crypto markets.

“Once these issues are resolved, it allows capital at scale to enter the market,” he said. “That’s the real catalyst here.”

Passage of the Clarity Act is widely viewed as a potential inflection point for crypto markets because it would establish the first comprehensive U.S. regulatory framework for digital assets, ending years of uncertainty over whether and how tokens fall under Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) or Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) jurisdiction.

The legislation would create clearer rules for exchanges, brokers, stablecoin issuers and decentralized finance platforms, a move many analysts say is necessary before large institutional investors, banks and asset managers can commit capital at scale. Supporters argue that regulatory clarity could reduce legal risk, improve consumer protections and give traditional financial firms the compliance framework needed to build crypto products and services in the U.S. rather than offshore.

The role of AI

The likely result, Vollono said, is the emergence of a middle layer of infrastructure providers focused on compliant yield generation. He said he expects many of those services to be powered by artificial intelligence acting as an orchestration layer for regulated capital flows.

Among the potential beneficiaries are decentralized finance (DeFi) infrastructure providers, vault curators, collateral management platforms, automated treasury services, lending markets and rewards systems.

“All of this can be automated by AI in a regulated market,” he said.

The underlying technology stack already exists, Vollono said, pointing to smart contracts, oracles, DeFi rails and API-based infrastructure that could be adapted to fit within a regulated framework.

“This creates a whole new world,” he said.

Legislation

The debate around the legislation has also exposed tensions between traditional banks and the crypto industry, particularly over stablecoins and deposit migration.

“There’s a lot at stake,” Vollono said. “Banks are worried about deposit flight, but I think that concern is largely overstated.”

He said that the traditional fractional reserve banking model depends on banks maintaining large capital bases that can be lent out to create credit and liquidity. If deposits migrate into tokenized dollars or yield-bearing blockchain products, that model could come under pressure.

Still, Vollono said he sees the eventual compromise as beneficial for incumbents rather than existentially threatening.

“Smart incumbents are going to compete,” he said. “Banks don’t necessarily have to give up market share.”

He suggested banks could eventually collateralize reserves to issue their own stablecoins and generate compliant yield under the Clarity framework, opening the door to entirely new business models.

Stablecoin 2.0

That dynamic is central to STBL’s own pitch.

The company describes itself as “stablecoin 2.0,” arguing for a shift away from the traditional centralized issuer model that dominates the market today.

Instead, STBL is building infrastructure that allows users to mint real-world-asset-backed stablecoins while retaining the economics generated by the underlying reserves.

“Users that provide value into the ecosystem should participate in the economics,” Vollono said.

The company’s infrastructure is designed to support compliant yield management while allowing users, rather than centralized issuers, to capture the yield generated by reserve assets.

For Vollono, the Clarity Act could provide the regulatory framework needed to accelerate that transition. “I’ll tell you what the Act makes clear: money-as-a-service has arrived,” he added.

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