Astrolescent Launching USDA, A Fully Collateralized Stablecoin on Radix
We are officially announcing that we will be releasing a fully collateralized stablecoin on Radix as well as a fiat on/off ramp.
Many people believe that this is a critical piece of the infrastructure for DeFi, therefore we will bring a fully regulated and compliant service to the users on Radix. The stablecoin will be named US Dollar by Astrolescent ($USDA) which has a familiar naming convention.
The USDA token will always be backed at a minimum of 1:1 and we will have proof of reserves on a consistent basis.
To mint USDA, a user must pass KYC as well as connect a bank account to deposit from. Once the fiat has settled, we will issue a mint to the users Web 3.0 address which we get when the user connects a Radix, Z3us, or Xidar wallet. This wallet will also receive a soulbound AKYCV token which stands for Astrolescent KYC Verified. For follow on transactions with minting and burning USDA, a user with AKYCV can skip the KYC process.
To burn USDA, a user also must pass KYC and connect a receiving bank account. The user sends the USDA tokens to an Astrolescent burn address, we initiate a fiat transfer to their bank account, and we burn the tokens once the fiat transfer has completed.
The fees for using the ramp will be a volume based fee with a discount which scales linearly based on the amount of ASTRL the user has at their Web 3.0 address they connect.
Based on our partnerships and licenses, we will be able to operate in 48 US states, UK, GER, NL, FR, AUS as well as many other countries in the EU. NY and WA are currently unavailable to our services, but we will be procuring a BitLicense in the future so that we will be able to operate legally in NY. The jurisidictions that we do not support for minting and burning of USDA can still trade or hold the token and still use our decentralized exchange aggregator.
We will be setting up pools with our Defiplaza partners to bootstrap the initial liquidity so users can on-ramp to XRD or any other token on Radix directly if they choose. Additionally, we will be offering ASTRL to users that mint USDA as an incentive for helping provide the initial liquidity.
We are currently in the process of designing a Betanet V2 / RCnet prototype where users can come in a mint some test tokens on network. The workflow will be similar to the production workflow, but the KYC process will be skipped. Users can connect a sandbox bank account and see the workflow there as well.
When the prototype is finished, we will begin productionizing the code and getting smart contract audits as well as instance pen-testing prior to the go-live.
The USDA stablecoin has been in planning and development for nearly 9 months. We only chose a banking partner who either had or was already in the process of procuring either a BitLicense or Trust Charter in NY.
Our partner is very close to finalizing the procurement of their Trust Charter in NY.
Why does this matter?
To receive this license there are very stringent laws and regulations. All of it revolves around consumer protection and prevention of the issues that recently plagued some of the larger companies in Crypto. Look at the major players that went out of business: Celsius, Voyager, Silvergate, FTX, Luna, BlockFi, etc. All of them had to restrict usage from NY because they never wouldve been accepted for the licensing there. The license is doing exactly what it should be: protecting users from massive implosions like the ones weve seen over the past year.
We will be disclosing our banking partner once all of the contracts have been finalized. At Astrolescent, our entire focus is ensuring that $USDA is safe, reliable, and legal for consumers to use.
As always, there are many great projects building on Radix and we are happy to be one of them. We are looking forward to Babylon and very excited for the launch!
