Welcome to Noon

Stablecoins are a compelling web3 product - they provide a digital, stable asset pegged to a major currency, like the U.S. dollar, with all the liquidity and transparency associated.

But… we know. Not another stablecoin.

It seems like a new one pops up every other week. They come in all shapes and sizes, backed by U.S. Treasury Bills, the basis trade, and everything in between. Some protocols keep the yield internally, some distribute to channel partners, and others share with their users. But we know, it’s a lot. Why do we need another one?

That is what each of our partners and early users asked us in our first conversation with them. Fortunately we think we have a unique value proposition, even in this crowded space, and our partners seem to agree. Read on - we hope you’ll feel the same.

This post is meant to be a high-level introduction to the Noon protocol. We’ll be posting more over the coming weeks to deep-dive into some of these topics. Feel free to subscribe below to stay up to date.

What is Noon?

Noon is building the next generation of stablecoin to help usher in the next billion users into the web3 ecosystem. We aim to be the most intelligent and fair yield-generating stablecoin in web3.

• Our stablecoin (USN) and staked stablecoin (sUSN) will bear yield and intelligently allocate capital to maximise returns from a basket of delta-neutral strategies.

• Our stablecoin will also be fair - only allowing builders and users access to governance tokens - and composable - allowing continued participation in the web3 ecosystem.

At every step of designing Noon, we asked ourselves one question: “How can we give users the most value?”

We have tried to answer this in numerous ways throughout our protocol - and we hope you see our answers as you read below and as you start using Noon yourself. Rest assured - we will continue to improve upon our answers in the coming weeks, months, and years to create more value for our every day

You can see an example of our weekly returns below:

What are we trying to build?

Noon is trying to play a (modest) role in leveling the financial playing field.

In today’s markets, more sophisticated financial players - namely rich individuals and large corporations - have access to liquid asset classes that generate yield. We call these dual-purpose assets. Think of companies using their inventory holdings as backing for a credit line, or wealthy individuals putting up their equity holdings as collateral to secure a (massive) loan.

For those of us who do not have access to these dual-purpose assets, our options are limited - as is our financial potential. Without this access, the rich keep getting richer, at our expense. This is the definition of a tilted playing field.

Noon attempts to level it - by creating a dual-purpose asset (sUSN) which is accessible to all. Our goal is to make Noon (and sUSN) as widely accessible as possible.

How does it work?

Simply put, our stablecoin (USN) is pegged 1:1 to the U.S. dollar. Permissioned users are able to mint USN by depositing collateral in the form of USDT or USDC. We intelligently deploy this collateral to generate yield safely.

We deploy your collateral into one of several delta-neutral strategies, to maximise returns for our users. We have started with two very simple deployment strategies:

1. Funding rate arbitrage: this sees us open a perfectly hedged (equal) position, buying an underlying asset (e.g. BTC), and selling the perpetual future (e.g. BTCUSDT perp), and earning the funding rate every 8 hours

2. Tokenised treasury bills: this sees us deploy assets into tokenised treasury bills to earn the treasury bill interest rate

We intelligently allocate across these two strategies initially, and plan to add on many more safe, secure, delta-neutral strategies over time. For now, when we expect the funding rate arbitrage strategy to return more than the treasury bill interest rate, we shift deployment into the former - and, if not, into the latter.

More on how Noon intelligently maximises yield for our users can be found in our deep-dive on Intelligence in the next week.

Most of the yield generated by these strategies (80%) is directed towards holders of our staked stablecoin (sUSN), while the remainder is allocated to Noon operations and the Noon Insurance Fund. Any excess funds will regularly be re-directed to holders of sUSN or our staked governance token.

More on how Noon fairly allocates not just returns, but all other forms of associated value, like governance tokens, almost entirely to users (without any investors or VCs), can be found in our deep-dive on Fairness in the next week.

Who is building Noon?

Noon is being built by a team with diverse experience in web3 and traditional finance, and is incubated by two long-standing web3 teams.

• Team: Noon’s team has a background at trad-fi firms like McKinsey & Co and Goldman Sachs, and web3 shops like DCL Markets, Dexterity Capital, GSR OKX, Huobi AAVE, and JST.

• Incubating Partners: Noon is incubated by DCL Markets, a web3 capital markets firm, and enjoys the assistance of Beam, a decentralized organization in the gaming industry

How can you help?

We are currently in the midst of our Private Beta, with a small number of our partners having started to test our protocol.

You can see our current TVL :

We’re going to open up a Public Beta in January 2025, when anyone will be able to join us on our journey. We aim to launch our full protocol and our governance token by Q2 2025.

Many stablecoins out there fall short—offering suboptimal returns and lacking fairness. While we pride ourselves on intelligently maximising returns and optimizing tokenomics, we do admit we have been a bit quiet and slow to spread the word about Noon. But with our Public Beta launch, get ready for a grand campaign whose success will rely on your help to cut through the noise.

If this sounds interesting to you, we’d be delighted if you would subscribe to this page, and join our waitlist at www.noon.capital, to be among the first to find out about future developments, including our points system, referral program, and much more ;)

We’re incredibly excited to build the most intelligent and fair stablecoin, and to bring it to each of you. We hope you’ll join us on our journey!