Stablecoin projects need collaboration, not competition: Frax founder

Jul 25, 2022
Stablecoin projects need collaboration, not competition: Frax founder

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Stablecoin initiatives have to take a extra collaborative method to develop one another’s liquidity and the ecosystem as a complete, says Sam Kazemian, the founding father of Frax Finance.

Chatting with Cointelegraph, Kazemian defined that so long as stablecoin “liquidity is rising proportionally with one another” by way of shared liquidity swimming pools and collateral schemes, there received’t ever be true competitors between stablecoins.

Kazemian’s FRAX stablecoin is a fractional-algorithmic stablecoin with components of its provide backed by collateral and different components backed algorithmically.

Kazemian defined that development within the stablecoin ecosystem shouldn’t be a “zero-sum recreation” as every token is more and more intertwined and reliant on one another’s efficiency. 

FRAX makes use of Circle’s USD Coin (USDC) as a portion of its collateral. DAI, a decentralized stablecoin maintained by the Maker Protocol, additionally makes use of USDC as collateral for greater than half of the tokens in circulation. As FRAX and DAI proceed to increase their market caps, they’ll seemingly want extra USDC collateral.

Nonetheless, Kazemian identified that if one challenge decides to dump one other, it may have damaging results on the ecosystem.

“It’s not a well-liked factor to say, but when Maker dumped its USDC, it will be unhealthy for Circle due to the yield they’re incomes from them.”

USDC is essential

The present prime three stablecoins by marketcap so as from the highest are Tether (USDT), USDC, and Binance USD (BUSD). DAI and FRAX are each decentralized stablecoins that take the fourth and fifth locations among the many prime.

USDC has had the most important development over the previous yr of all three, with market cap greater than doubling final July to $55 billion, bringing it practically inside arm’s attain of USDT in accordance with CoinGecko.

Kazemian feels that USDC’s proliferation throughout the business and arguably higher transparency about its reserves ought to make it probably the most priceless stablecoin for collaboration throughout the ecosystem.

He referred to as USDC a “low-risk and low-innovation challenge,” and acknowledged that it serves as the bottom layer for additional innovation from different stablecoins. He stated:

“We and DAI are the innovation layer on prime of USDC, just like the decentralized financial institution on prime of a classical financial institution.”

Algo stablecoins don’t work

Although the FRAX stablecoin is partially stabilized algorithmically, Kazemian says that pure algorithmic stablecoins ”simply don’t work.”

Algorithmic stablecoins like Terra USD (UST), which collapsed in a dramatic vogue in Might, keep their peg by way of sophisticated algorithms that alter provide based mostly on market circumstances reasonably than conventional collateral.

“With a purpose to have a decentralized on-chain stablecoin it must have collateral. Doesn’t should be overcollateralized like Maker, nevertheless it wants exogenous collateral.”

The dying spiral in Terra’s ecosystem turned evident when UST, which is now referred to as USTC, misplaced its peg.

The protocol began minting new LUNA tokens to make sure there have been sufficient tokens backing the stablecoin. Fast minting drove down the value of LUNA, now referred to as LUNC, which sparked a whole retail sell-off of tokens, dooming any hopes of re-peg.

Associated: Liquidity protocol makes use of stablecoins to make sure zero impermanent loss

Within the weeks main as much as the UST depeg, Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon acknowledged that his challenge wanted to fractionally again the stablecoin with completely different types of collateral, particularly BTC.

“On the finish, even Terra realized that their mannequin wouldn’t work,” Kazemian added, “so that they began shopping for up different tokens.”

By the top of Might, Terra had offered practically all of its $3.5 billion price of BTC.

Terra took down different initiatives in its wake, together with fellow algo stablecoin DEI from Deus Finance, which additionally has didn’t return to the greenback peg as of the time of writing.