What would happen if stablecoins like $USDT and $USDC were to face government scrutiny one day?
What if $DAI, intended to be a fully decentralized stablecoin, became entangled in this scenario due to a rise in USDC or centralized stablecoin reserves within the Maker protocol in exchange for DAI?
This kind of discussion is heavily discussed in $DAI stablecoin forums and the community is in dilemma on maintaining stability through fully decentralized means and on the other hand providing immediate redeemability to a cash-like asset like $USDC. Recently Coinbase’s Grant Rebenn and Circle’s Caroline Hill just begged Congress to crack down and issue enforcement action against their competitor $USDT.
Issuing private money via centralized means and seeking Congress to eliminate competition is a flawed move. It speeds up the expected government crackdown on centralized stablecoins. Circle's strategy is misguided here and it’s directed towards trading it for baseless political favors. The crypto community has seen the fall of many stablecoins over the years and when irrational fears strike among the hearts of people then there is no saving anyone and the above actions by Circle seem to be a concerning one. This is where a fully decentralized Stablecoin comes in to mitigate the above risks by allowing the minting of stablecoins through different types of crypto native collaterals. These collateral reserves are being tracked periodically & visible to everyone on-chain with liquidation backstops enabled to prevent irresponsible minting of stablecoins in a pseudonymous world of blockchains. There is no congress here to crack down and instead, the community itself will decide the fate of the stablecoin.
It’s just that requiring a fully decentralized stablecoin requires backing by crypto assets which due to their volatility leads to capital in-efficient designs and affects scalability during bearish periods. Maintaining the peg requires constant vigilance and can be complex. Decentralized stablecoins have suffered higher peg deviations over the years as the inherent design relies on arbitrage incentives to bring the stablecoin back to peg with small deviations considered healthy as it provides opportunities for increasing stablecoin userbase & liquidity through arbitrageurs. Over the years, users have also looked for immediate redeemability to cash-like assets like $USDT or $USDC due to the volatile nature of cryptocurrencies. Since re-deeming back to a crypto asset that can decrease in price when there is a black swan event in crypto doesn’t seem comfortable with stablecoin users. That’s why Maker DAI has brought their Peg stabilization module to allow for immediate redeemability and manage the supply and demand dynamics of their stablecoin. However, this brings centralization risks due to an increase in reserves. But since like any other product it’s the product market fit that matters so obeying users’ needs and introducing this peg stabilization module especially when the core value proposition of the product is maintaining their product stability seems like a logical choice.
A stablecoin is mainly a better alternative considering its programmable nature and composability with other Web3 applications seamlessly. Holding stablecoins allows you the freedom to explore multiple opportunities in Web3 across social, Defi, and governance. However, holding cash in bank demand deposits does provide insurance through the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation). But one can argue that users can also buy insurance on their stablecoin deposits across different platforms but one needs to remember then they have to pay for insurance premiums across every platform they deposit their stablecoin apart from getting the insurance against an initial issuer of stablecoins.
What about a stablecoin with an insurance built-in ?
We posed this question in different ways to users and after polling & surveying around 10k+ users, these were the findings
Based on the above findings and listening to user’s needs we started building Autonomint, a collateralized-based stablecoin protocol with built-in derivative-based insurance that not only gives very high capital efficiency but also doesn’t charge any initial premiums as well for your stablecoin and collateral protection. Now, user doesn’t need to worry about the peg deviation, collateral liquidation, capital in-efficiency, and unpredictable yields. Autonomint in-built insurance mechanism provides protection or insurance for your collateral so that irrespective of the peg deviation or worst-case black swan event or any sort of centralization risk, the user stablecoin & collateral holdings will stay intact and the user can keep on pursuing the opportunities across Web3 and the outside world. We also allow you the possibility to mint stablecoins for almost the full value of your crypto collateral. On top of that, we protect your collateral against getting liquidated and also provide you the full value of your crypto collateral irrespective of the volatility. This is enabled through our decentralized Credit default swap (dCDS) product which allows us to spread the credit risk across multiple dCDS users in return for derivative fees exchanged from every user minting stablecoins.
Apart from this, we have created a Delta-neutral design where the crypto collateral volatility is hedged through this dCDS product. This helps provide insurance or protection against excessive crypto volatility up to certain limits like 20% or 30% of the crypto downside as per the volatility. The dCDS users in return are paid fees from multiple stablecoin credit takers in a way that dCDS users who stick for long term of 6 months and above will be able to accrue 200% in pure stablecoin yields on top of their initial deposit. Thus, dCDS users can deposit either our stablecoin $AMINT or $USDT or other protocol tokens like $COMP, $AAVE, etc. in our dCDS module and return accrue stable yields in our stablecoin $AMINT. Our dCDS module can be utilized or customized for existing Dapps or protocols which want to safeguard against the dilution risk on their tokens and thus want to earn stablecoin yields on their token holdings. The protocols can also partner with Autonomint to get protection or insurance for their existing treasury holdings.
Currently, a lot of stablecoin protocols are giving yields to stablecoin holders’ derived from ETH staking returns and by diluting their governance or utility tokens in return for attracting users to their applications. However, if there is some black swan event or high crypto volatility then it impacts negatively the demand-supply of stablecoin leading to peg distortions and cyclical risks. At Autonomint, we don’t have any token but instead, we have an ABOND asset with a flexible maturity decided by the user minting stablecoins. This ABOND asset has a defined face value so that despite the fall in the value of the collateral, the users can redeem the ABOND asset at face value and simultaneously keep on accruing yields on their collateral holdings which are reflected in ABOND in terms of rebasing mechanism.
Who am I?
Hey, I'm Akshit Vig, with over 7 years of building, consulting & selling in the crypto space, including my recent stint as "Head of Growth" at a Top 20 crypto exchange. In 2019, I envisioned a stablecoin protocol – the perfect fit for millions of users & businesses. Teaming up with my CTO, we got our research paper accepted by Wiley Scrivener Publishing. MVP? Done. Test net launch? Check. Angel investors on board? Absolutely. We've even inked an MoA with Joseon, the world's first cybernation with multi-country treaties, providing us with secondary regulatory cover. Our main move? Shifting to a crypto-friendly regulatory hub. 🚀 Currently, we will be doing thorough audit of the code, gather product feedbacks and exploratory marketing across different distribution channels.
Partnership & Opportunities:
If you're intrigued by the project and eager to delve deeper, feel free to get in touch at akshit@autonomint.com or TG: @CEO_Autonomint.
For those looking to invest in our venture, we extend a warm invitation to join us.
Join Us
Autonomint is actively onboarding users, partners, and liquidity providers, offering priority access to our main-net. This comes with the added benefit of protocol-enabled sponsorship for insurance cover and discounted issuance of ABOND assets.
If you're keen on taking up the role of initial Liquidity Provider in our dCDS and concentrated Liquidity pools, don't hesitate to reach out.
We're also accepting applications for contributor roles, spanning community, content, quantitative analysis, code audit, and simulation-related positions
Our Testnet is live: Join
Additional Information:
Website - https://www.autonomint.com/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/autonomint
Discord - https://discord.gg/4QFaUTwjkU