Xash launches gold rewards for Solana stablecoin users, betting on usage over holding

Xash launched its Solana-based rewards app today at the Solana Breakpoint 2026 event in London. The company’s live app demo is scheduled for November 15 and 17 at Olympia London.

Co-founder and CEO of Xash, Kevin Huynh, called out the DeFi user retention problem the company aims to fix, in which activity falls off once reward campaigns end, saying, “Stablecoins don’t have a supply problem. They have a usage problem. Incentive campaigns rent users for a few weeks, then they’re gone.”

Xash’s solution replaces traditional platform tokens or temporarily inflated APYs with tokenized gold rewards for users who deploy their stablecoins within established Solana DeFi. 

How does Xash work?

Xash is a single, non-custodial front end that sits on top of existing Solana DeFi protocols and scans available lending, liquidity and trading opportunities every day. Users can see a ranked list of how much gold they could earn over an estimated 30-day reward and how much it would cost. 

Notably, Xash does not take custody of users’ funds. They have to select the options that best fit their trading strategy by themselves and also sign every transaction from their wallets.

Speaking in an October interview, Xash co-founder and CEO Huynh explained that users can share from a monthly pool of gold by earning points (XP) for activity on their connected Phantom or Solflare wallets. Rewards are based on earned points and were paid in Paxos Gold (PAXG) on Solana at the time.

At launch, users can withdraw their accumulated gold directly to their wallets. A new curated Kamino liquidity vault also lets them deploy stablecoins with a single deposit rather than handling each position manually.

Xash noted that it mitigates risk by avoiding directional price bets and borrowed funds in its strategies. However, users can still lose funds in the event of a DeFi protocol’s failure or sharp market swings.

Xash lists Kevin Huynh (PiKNiK & Company co-founder and CEO), Vinny Lingham (former Multicoin Capital general partner and Civic and Gyft co-founder), Alen Ribic (SweepSouth co-founder), and Llew Claasen (former Bitcoin Foundation executive director) as co-founders.

Why Xash rewards stablecoin users in gold

Xash went all in on gold as its choice reward because of the precious metal’s merits. One of the project’s co-founders, Lingham, has been openly bullish about the metal, predicting gold could reach $10,000 an ounce within 24 months. 

On an Unchained podcast, the co-founder also noted that “Central banks in crisis buy gold, not Bitcoin,” arguing that gold could back a $200 billion stablecoin, while Bitcoin cannot.

The initial vision for Xash was to build a gold-backed synthetic dollar before it pivoted to the current model that separates stablecoins and rewards, allowing users to hold their preferred dollar tokens while steadily stacking an asset not tied to the dollar.

Will Xash’s reward strategy survive the CLARITY Act?

Xash’s activity-only design lines up with the direction of US stablecoin policy, where stablecoin issuers are already barred from paying yield to users for simply for holding tokens, per the GENIUS Act. The CLARITY Act that stalled in Congress prohibits rewards on balances that function like bank deposit interest. 

However, it allows incentives tied to genuine activity such as payments, transfers and trading. The Baker McKenzie law firm described the policy stance as a shift from a “buy and hold” to a “buy and use” model.

Even so, industry executives have been signaling that rewards will survive any crackdown on passive yield by moving into activity-based formats. Xash is effectively one of those ways, and Huynh’s longer-term pitch is aimed at stablecoin issuers, whom he has called the company’s real customers.

Xash is betting on issuing a reward people want to keep, rather than one they sell immediately to sustain user activity.

As of October, Xash was funding rewards from its own venture-backed market development fund to test demand, and had no signed contracts with stablecoin issuers, though Huynh said it was in talks with several.