The Foundation will champion an equitable and inclusive community-focused ecosystem
Key Backers Including Bitget, Curve, Matrixport, and Stargate among 23 Initial Contributors
Cayman Islands – 14 November 2023 – The Verified USD Foundation (Foundation) has announced the launch of Verified USD (USDV), a community-driven stablecoin fully backed by tokenized US Treasury Bills (T-bills). USDV’s underlying reserve of tokenized real-world assets (RWA) offers a compelling alternative to legacy stablecoins, providing stable value and real-time verification through proof-of-reserve.
The Foundation, a not-for-profit organization, is dedicated to fostering a sustainable and progressive stablecoin ecosystem. This includes the use of ColorTrace, a novel value attribution algorithm developed by LayerZero, which ensures fair and transparent reward distribution among verified minters.
“USDV represents a major evolution in stablecoin technology,” remarked Matthew Commons, President of the Verified USD Foundation. “Unique among stablecoins, USDV enables a collaborative community approach where those who create stablecoin use cases can be an integral part of the stablecoin value creation. The Foundation is excited to work with contributors in unlocking new use cases with real-world impact, backed by unmatched transparency and stability.”
Powered by Transparency of on-chain assets
The Foundation has chosen Matrixport’s Short-term Treasury Bill Token (STBT) as its initial underlying reserve asset. All USDV transactions can be tracked on-chain, with smart contracts having undergone rigorous security audits by OtterSec, Zellic.io and Paladin.
John Ge, CEO of Matrixport said:
“Bringing real world assets on-chain will be a major theme for the digital assets industry and we are thrilled that our tokenized treasury offering has been selected as the inaugural reserve asset by the Verified USD Foundation. Under Matrixdock, our branded RWA platform, we have spared no effort to continually enhance STBT’s transparency and responsiveness to meet exacting standards of reliability and security expected by our institutional clients.”
The ERC-1400 standard token STBT is pegged 1:1 with 1USD of net-asset value (NAV), fully backed by ‘risk free’ short-term T-bills and secured reverse repurchase agreements (Repo). Designed for accredited investors, STBT empowers the USDV community with real-time verification via on-chain Proof-of-Reserves. Launched in February 2023, STBT is a leading tokenized T-bill on the Ethereum chain.
ColorTrace, the Bedrock for a Fair Distributed Rewards System
USDV utilizes ColorTrace, a novel value attribution algorithm by LayerZero Labs, to ensure a fair and transparent reward distribution within its stablecoin ecosystem. This system enables verified minters to mark their circulating tokens and transparently access rewards derived from on-chain reserves without dispute.
“The ColorTrace algorithm solves the challenge of attribution for fungible tokens,” stated Ryan Zarick, CTO and Co-Founder of LayerZero. “The applications of the ColorTrace algorithm to existing RWA-backed assets - like stablecoins - are exciting and have the potential to create a more fair and equitable distribution across all contributors to an ecosystem’s success.”
USDV is integrated with LayerZero’s Omnichain Fungible Tokens (OFT) Standard, enabling seamless operation across multiple blockchain networks. It will initially launch on Ethereum, BNB Smartchain, Avalanche, Arbitrum and Optimism blockchains, interoperating across all chains supported by LayerZero (currently 40+).
Community-driven Ecosystem
23 Industry-leading CeFi, DeFi and GameFi contributors are supporting USDV at launch, including abracadabra.money, Animoca Brands, BasedApp, BIT Exchange, Bitget Exchange, Cactus Custody, Coin98 Finance, Curve Finance, Beam by Eco, Frax Finance, LayerZero, Matrixport, Maverick Protocol, Reunit Wallet, Stargate Finance, SushiSwap, Term Finance, Trader Joe, Velodrome Finance, Wintermute, Wombat Exchange, WOO Network and zk.Link.
Gracy Chen, Managing Director of Bitget said:
“We are excited to announce the listing of the USDV project on our exchange. This partnership aligns with our ongoing commitment to support a variety of potential projects within the industry, fostering a diverse and vibrant financial ecosystem. The innovative approaches employed by the USDV project are indicative of the forward-thinking ventures we continually seek to associate with. Through this collaboration, we are taking a step further towards a more inclusive and dynamic digital asset landscape.”
Michael Egorov, Founder of Curve Finance said:
“Having founded Curve Finance, I am excited to see how the incentive design of USDV works. A diversity of redeemable stablecoins is critical for the stability of DeFi and seeing such a credible new offering is impressive. USDV's transparency is quite unique, and cross-chain enablement via omnichain standard is perfect for custodial assets. I want to extend a warm welcome to USDV as it enters the world of DeFi.”
Angus Buttar, Foundation Lead at the Stargate Foundation said:
"With USDV launching as a native omnichain token, Stargate is well placed to help ensure users can access it wherever they need to. We’re also excited to see the opportunities that USDV provides to users and protocols across DeFi."
With the backing of the inaugural community of USDV contributors, the Foundation aims to expand ecosystem partnerships, increase accessibility to more blockchain ecosystems, and enhance utility on various platforms in the future.