USDV: the first fully transparent stablecoin with native omnichain capabilities Interview with Matthew Commons
The Verified USD Foundation is a not-for-profit independent entity accountable for USDV.
Verified USD (USDV) is a tokenized real-world asset (RWA) backed stablecoin built for modern finance.
It is dedicated to nurturing a progressive stablecoin ecosystem that enables equitable value sharing amongst its community of contributors.
In this interview, at Token2049 in Dubai, on 19 April 2024, Matthew Commons, the president of the Verified USD Foundation shares more information, the latest news and his vision for the next future growth of USDV.
Crypto Breaking: Can you tell us more about yourself and your company?
Matthew Commons: Im the president of the Verified USD Foundation. Were the issuer of the USDV stablecoin, which launched in November of last year.
We were founded as a collaboration between two organizations.
One is LayerZero, which is the leader in cross-chain messaging and the other is Matrixport, which is a major crypto financial services company based in Hong Kong and Singapore.
The Verified USD stablecoin is unique in several aspects.
Were looking at the industry, and today there are two legacy stablecoin issuers that have over 90% of the market.
And were thinking about the future growth of Web3, what do we need? We think that there is an opportunity for some significant innovation for the future of Web3 payments, which could be a stablecoin market that is 20 times, even 30 times bigger or more than what it is today.
Were a fully reserved backed stablecoin. Every dollar of USDV is backed by one dollar of our collateral token, a short-term treasury bill on the Ethereum mainnet.
Were also the first stablecoin built using Layer Zeros Omnichain Fungible Token standard.
So while every USDV is born on Ethereum mainnet, it can be burned and reminted on seven, actually eight different chains. Now we just announced Telos as our eighth chain.
And we also have a unique way of sharing the yield of the underlying treasury bill collateral with our partners.
Thats probably our biggest difference under the hood that makes it very good for us to partner with DeFi protocols, centralized exchanges and others. Were already working with seven of the top ten DeFi protocols.
CB: Is USDV already listed on some exchanges?
Matthew Commons: Its listed on Bit.com and Bitget. We have several other exchanges that well be announcing in the coming months as well. And were on many of the biggest decentralized exchanges too such as Curve, Uniswap, Pancake Swap, Trader Joe, and Velodrome. We can go down a big list.
CB: How different is USDV compared to the other stablecoins already available in the market?
Matthew Commons: I think there are three technical differences.
One is called ColorTrace which is where were able to trace which partner brings new capital into the system.
So whoevers creating a new USDV, we can sort of color the USDV that has been minted by PancakeSwap, Uniswap or Bitget. And wherever that goes through the ecosystem, that partner will earn a share, at least half, sometimes more of the underlying treasury yield. So thats one big difference.
Another big difference is the Omnichain Fungible Token (OFT) Standard, eliminating unofficial wrapped or bridged versions and liquidity fragmentation.
So we expect in time to be listed natively on more chains than any other stablecoin.
And then the third is transparency because our collateral is on-chain, youre not relying on a monthly audit report or something like that. Everyone can see in real-time that the collateral is there.
We, also, have Chainlink proof of reserves, where in real-time, you can go on to our Dune dashboard and see exactly what the collateral is and exactly what is issued.
CB: So for every stablecoin, there will be a dollar?
Matthew Commons: Yes, thats correct. And you can programmatically see that.
The minter partners can convert from the stablecoin to the collateral token.
CB: Is there any staking program?
Matthew Commons: Yes, we just announced that we will be coming out with a staking program for staking USDV and also for staking other cryptos with yields in USDV.
So expect to hear more from that in the coming weeks on our Twitter. Weve announced that we will be having that. We dont yet have the exact details of things, but it uses off-exchange settlement. So it has some similarities to the Athena staking in terms of its technical design. Thats been very popular now.
So it has a similar technical structure, but different underlying yield mechanisms. Its not going to be available in all jurisdictions, unfortunately. It wont be available in the US, for example, but it will.
So staking is going to be quite important.
The other thing that well be rolling out is a point system as well.
As we look to have more community involvement with USDV, the first thing we need to do to drive community involvement is to know who the community is.
So the points are a way to track who is acquiring USDV, who is bridging it, who is staking it, and who are our best community members.
CB: Any announcement, or partnership in the pipeline at the moment?
Matthew Commons: We recently announced Telos as our eighth blockchain. So were very excited about that.
We also recently were awarded an Arbitrum long-term incentive program grant. So several hundred thousand dollars of ARB tokens that well be using. So we have some new partners.
We also just announced MugglePay as a partner.
Were working with them on the LTIP program. So when we do this, were all about partnerships.
CB: Why are you attending Token2049 in Dubai?
Matthew Commons: Our underlying model, where we attract the yield, share the yield with partners, its very conducive to bringing in partners, new chains, and new protocols from all over the world. So thats why were here at Token2049 to meet with partners, new chains, and new protocols.
For a lot of chains, we want to be kind of the first stablecoin that is natively on there, were the first stablecoin natively on Telos, and thats one of our advantages, that we can have safe and secure unified liquidity across many chains.
And with these new promising chains, you know, Telos was just announcing their new zkEVM, which has, like, hardware integration and things. There are so many new chains happening.
You really need to have something that is natively on the chain.
The legacy stablecoins, theyre just not fast enough and not going to these other things. Because we have the technical OFT standard, were able to safely go to more chains.
And thats kind of where we play, we see our growth not so much competing head-to-head with the legacy stablecoins. I mean, we do that to some extent, on some exchanges, but going to new markets where other ones arent.
Our biggest chain today is the BNB chain, weve had a very good partnership with them, especially around payments.
Some days weve been the number three stablecoin on BNB.
CB: Whats the USDV market cap at the moment?
Matthew Commons: The market cap right now is about $23 million and were still relatively new.
We havent had any consumer-facing, end-user-facing benefits. Up until now, it was always a total soft launch.
We did not announce anything in November, it just appeared on chains. We worked over the past three months, building partnerships and now we are ready to build a community of users.
Theres staking, theres points, theres excitement, and theres new functionality that you cant have with any other stablecoin.
CB: Where can people stay up to date with USDV news?
Matthew Commons: We encourage people to stay tuned. In the coming weeks, well be announcing more about both staking and points. Our Twitter (X) account is the best area.
CB: What is the gas fee for sending USDV?
Matthew Commons: So it depends on the chain, its from an end-user perspective, and it feels very similar to using other stablecoins. If youre on Ethereum mainnet, the fees are going to be higher than if youre on Telos or Arbitrum or something like that.
So the same type of thing.
What we are different from others, at least today, is the ability to very easily bridge across that and go to some other chains where the legacy stablecoins arent.
We also have some interesting incentives as weve gotten started with.
Where we really start on every chain is we need a bridge to the chain. We need some type of native DeFi swapping so you can get in and out of our stablecoin. It could be versus other stablecoins, or it could be versus the native token.
And now were starting to light up more borrowing and lending. Now that weve gotten our oracles up and running, we can do more borrowing and lending. Youll see that on BNB and Arbitrum coming out.
There are some incentives to provide liquidity in some of these swapping pools and things. But the real end-user-facing excitement is going to be much more around staking and points.
CB: Where is the company based?
Matthew Commons: The Foundation is based in the Cayman Islands and we also have a British Virgin Islands subsidiary. Our two partners, LayerZero is based in Canada and Matrixport is based in Singapore.
CB: Its Bitcoin-having so there is a lot of Bitcoin related news. What will be the implication for USDV?
Matthew Commons: Ill just say we believe that theres going to be a lot happening with Bitcoin Layer 2s this year.
Were not formally on Bitcoin Layer 2s right now, but Ill tell you that were paying a lot of attention to it and you can expect more from us.
CB: Are you attending any other conference?
Matthew Commons: The next one, is Consensus in the US and ECC in Brussels in July. Theres an Unstable Summit there, too.
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