Drafting: Mat / Sylvia / Cage / Nora / Darl / WolfDAO
Editing and proofreading: Punko
The competition for stablecoins continues to be fierce, as everyone wants to create stablecoins, but not everyone can do it. Ambition always needs to match resources.
Mainstream stablecoins all have their own strong backgrounds and support: USDT was created by "Tether"; USDC is associated with Coinbase and has strong compliance; FDUSD is endorsed by Binance; PYUSD is backed by a payment giant; the newcomer USDe received a call from Arthur Hayes, further intensifying the market competition. So, in this context, what has sparked the market's attention with the recent launch of USD0?
USD0 Debut: RWA Support, Where Does the Confidence Come From
Source: Usual. Money Docs
Usual Labs, the team behind USD0, is led by former French parliament member Pierre Person, who has been instrumental in advancing cryptocurrency legislation, bringing unique regulatory insights and industry resources to the project. When launching USD0, he declared "take down Tether (Untether)," attracting attention and generating significant discussion. Compared to other stablecoins, USD0's biggest selling point is its backing by real-world assets (RWA), providing high security and a decentralized structure through short-term US Treasury bonds and repurchase agreements. USD0 offers a highly transparent and decentralized stablecoin solution, while also providing users with multi-level participation and earning opportunities through enhanced yield product USD0++ and governance token USUAL.
As USD0 is based on RWA, it requires significant financial resources and strict risk management to ensure its stability and security, making the rich backgrounds and experience of the team members crucial. The development of Usual Labs relies not only on technological innovation but also on a deep understanding of the financial markets and the integration of multiple resources. In the following content, we will delve into the team composition, financing situation, and security audit of Usual Labs, showcasing the unique aspects of the project and its potential in the DeFi ecosystem from multiple perspectives.
USD0 Team Behind the Scenes
Pierre Person (CEO) / Hugo Sallé de Chou (COO) / Adli Takkal Bataille (DEO)
CEO: Pierre Person
Born on January 22, 1989, Pierre Person is a former member of the French National Assembly (2017-2022) known for promoting cryptocurrency regulatory legislation. He was involved in drafting the PACTE law in 2019 and has been a key advocate for the French cryptocurrency industry. After leaving politics, he founded Usual Labs, dedicated to developing the decentralized stablecoin USD0 based on real-world assets (RWA).
DEO: Adli Takkal Bataille
Adli Takkal Bataille has been active in the blockchain field since 2014. He founded the French Bitcoin media Le Coin Coin and served as the president of Le Cercle du Coin, the largest non-profit cryptocurrency organization in France. Additionally, he has founded multiple blockchain-related companies and organizations.
COO: Hugo Sallé de Chou
Hugo Sallé de Chou is the former co-founder of the payment app Pumpkin, with extensive entrepreneurial and management experience and a strong background in blockchain and payments.
It is worth noting that Pierre Person is a member of the French Socialist Party and an important political ally of Emmanuel Macron. In the 2024 French National Assembly elections, Macron's Renaissance party (centrist) failed to maintain its political dominance, losing to the left-wing alliance "New People's Front," with a narrow margin compared to the far-right National Rally party. This result reflects the changing political landscape in France and even across Europe, signaling a weakening influence of traditional centrist parties and an exacerbation of political polarization. In this changed political environment, figures like Pierre Person face greater political risks and uncertainties.
In this context, Person's decision to transition from politics to creating an RWA project can be seen as a strategic response to the political polarization in France and the diminishing influence of centrist parties. This decision not only aligns with his consistent stance on financial innovation but also opens up a new professional path for him in a rapidly growing and evolving industry. Person's experience and resources, along with Usual as his first "crypto offspring" after his political career, have raised high expectations for this project among many.
Community: Three Major Community Endorsements
Usual Labs has received support from three major communities: Turtle Club, Dewhales, and Benmo. During its Token Generation Event (TGE), Usual Labs specifically reserved 0.66% of the fully diluted valuation (FDV) for token distribution to these three communities, emphasizing their importance in the project's development, enhancing community engagement, and ensuring their ongoing contributions to the ecosystem.
Source: Usual. Money Docs
Turtle Club
A DAO organization whose members are mostly blockchain technology developers and experts, with partnerships with multiple blockchain protocols and projects, providing high-level technical support and innovative ideas for projects.
Dewhales
A community composed of experienced cryptocurrency traders and high-volume traders ("whales"). Most members are investors with significant digital assets (known for strict admission standards, typically requiring users with on-chain assets exceeding $1 million to join), possessing strong financial strength and trading influence.
Benmo
A community focused on cryptocurrency trading and investment, consisting of a large number of traders with keen market insights and rich investment experience. This community is not only active in trading activities but also has significant influence in market analysis and investment strategy sharing.
Financing: Strong Lineup, Small Scale
Usual Labs' financing performance is relatively complex. Despite attracting multiple top-tier investment institutions, including IOSG Ventures, Kraken Ventures, GSR, and StarkWare, which have extensive influence and resources in the blockchain and DeFi fields, the project's current round of financing is only $7 million, despite the strong lineup of investors, which is not outstanding in the crypto market.
Source: Rootdata
The relatively low amount of financing may reflect several potential factors:
Early Stage of the Project: Usual Labs may still be in the early stages of product development and market validation, leading investors to take a cautious approach in validating its business model and market prospects. Therefore, despite the project's potential, investors may be more inclined to invest cautiously, waiting for further development and validation before increasing their investment.
Market Environment and Risk Control: The current uncertainty in the crypto market and regulatory pressures may make investors more cautious, especially in the relatively new and complex field of real-world asset (RWA) stablecoins. Investors may have concerns about risk control, leading to a more conservative investment amount.
Financing Strategy: Usual Labs may intentionally choose a small amount of financing to ensure necessary startup capital while controlling share dilution. This may also indicate the team's confidence in its growth potential and plans to attract more capital through subsequent product and market performance.
Diversified Investors: Despite the participation of multiple investors, each investor's contribution may be relatively small, resulting in a lower total financing amount. This situation is common in scenarios where multiple parties share risks, especially when the project is still in its early stages. This may also indicate a high level of market recognition for the project, but investors generally remain cautious in the current market environment.
Radiation of Investor Relations Network
Several investment institutions involved in this round of financing have deep backgrounds in both the blockchain and traditional finance fields. Despite the modest $7 million financing amount, the investor backgrounds are diverse. Major investors IOSG Ventures and Kraken Ventures have extensive investment portfolios and strong influence in the blockchain field. IOSG Ventures focuses on early-stage blockchain projects and has supported several successful DeFi projects (such as Eigenlayer, Celestia, Morpho, Galxe, Centrifuge, etc.). Kraken Ventures leverages the resources of the Kraken exchange and actively participates in the development of financial technology and cryptocurrency ecosystems.
Participation of institutions in Usual Labs' current round of financing Source: @10xWolfDAO compilation
Future Partnerships and Support
PratFive: Referring to Usual as a "leader" demonstrates strong support, with lavish praise at the end of the article.
IOSG: Through the relationships with these investors, Usual Labs may gain more cooperation opportunities in the future. IOSG published an introduction to Usual Money on its personal public account on July 15 and prominently featured Usual's "Untether" slogan in the title.
Initially speculated to be associated with IOSG, the resources pushed to Usual for cooperation may be related to Morpho (one of IOSG's investment projects, which has received high attention this year). The previous USDC treasury managed by MEV Capital on Morpho provides funds for the Usual protocol market and offers additional incentives to borrowers, thereby increasing the annualized yield of USDC.
Audits: Multi-Stage Strategy
According to official documents, Usual Labs has disclosed its audit situation, implementing a multi-stage audit plan to ensure project security from November 2023 to June 2024. This includes vCISO plans and smart contract audits and reviews by Spearbit and Bailsec, as well as multi-stage smart contract audits and codebase simplification by Cantina, and the launch of public competitions and bug bounty programs. These measures demonstrate Usual Labs' high regard for code security and transparency.
Audit Evaluation Conclusion
- Spearbit: Spearbit is a decentralized community of security researchers with a certain industry reputation for its decentralized audit model and deep cooperation with projects.
- Bailsec: Established in 2020, Bailsec focuses on smart contract security and code auditing. Its professionalism is gradually being recognized in the blockchain development community, but it has less influence and recognition compared to CertiK and SlowMist.
- Cantina: Cantina is a security company specializing in blockchain technology (its official website also mentions Web 2.0 business) and has a certain level of recognition in the industry, but its market influence and brand recognition are still relatively small.
Overall, Usual's code audits are frequent and ongoing, indicating that it has made efforts in code security and adopted community audits, small audit firms, or public competitions and bug bounty programs, showing a clear tendency to compress costs while not disclosing audit costs.
Potential Concerns
Despite the project's unique advantages and innovative design, potential risks still need to be collectively considered. Here are a few concerns raised by WolfDAO when understanding the project, presented for discussion:
1. Market and Liquidity Risks
- Liquidity Challenges of RWA Support: USD0 is backed by real-world assets such as short-term US Treasury bonds, which, despite their high security, may face liquidity challenges in extreme market conditions. Particularly when the market experiences volatility, it may affect USD0's redemption capability, leading to liquidity risks.
- Competition Pressure in Emerging Markets: The stablecoin market is highly competitive, with market leaders such as USDT and USDC already occupying a significant market share. As a newcomer, USD0 must contend with the liquidity and user base advantages of these stablecoins, which may limit its market penetration in the short term.
2. Governance and Decision-Making Complexity
Decentralized Governance Challenges: As a governance token, USUAL grants users the right to participate in project decision-making. However, while decentralized governance can enhance transparency and participation, it may also lead to decision-making complexity and inefficiency, especially in times of community disagreement. This complexity may affect the project's pace and market responsiveness.
Price Volatility of Governance Tokens: As a governance tool, the market price fluctuations of the USUAL token may affect the stability of governance and the willingness of token holders to participate. If the price of USUAL fluctuates dramatically, it may lead to a decrease in holders' interest in governance, thereby affecting the effectiveness of decentralized management.
3. Dependence on Market and Regulatory Environment
Market Dependency: The success of USD0 and USD0++ highly depends on the market demand for real-world assets and changes in market conditions. If the market's preference for RWA changes or more attractive stablecoin options emerge, it may negatively impact the market acceptance of USD0.
Regulatory Risks: The stablecoin industry is facing increasingly strict regulations, especially for financial products linked to real-world assets. Although USD0 provides highly transparent asset support, changes in the future regulatory environment may bring compliance costs and business adjustments. If regulatory requirements become stricter, it may increase the project's operating costs or limit its business expansion.
4. Technical and Security Risks
Smart Contract and Technical Risks: Despite Usual Labs' multi-stage audit strategy, inherent vulnerabilities in smart contracts still exist. Any code vulnerabilities, hacker attacks, or smart contract failures could have a significant impact on user fund security and project reputation.
Complexity of Technical Implementation: The multi-tiered revenue structure and decentralized architecture of USD0 and USD0++ require complex technical implementation, which may encounter technical challenges during project operation. Especially when the project needs to respond quickly to market changes or expand new features, technical limitations may become obstacles to project development.
5. Market Education and User Acceptance
User Learning Curve Due to Complexity: While the multi-tiered revenue and decentralized governance offered by USD0 and USD0++ are innovative, they may have a certain learning curve for ordinary users to understand and use these features. Insufficient market education may lead to low user acceptance, limiting the expansion of the project's user base.
Establishing Market Trust: As an emerging stablecoin project, USD0 needs time and performance to establish market trust. Even with innovative and transparent design, it still needs to overcome users' natural skepticism towards new projects, especially when compared to mainstream stablecoins in the market.
Conclusion: Showing Promise, Dancing with Prospects and Challenges
Usual is in the early stages of development and has not yet disclosed detailed whitepapers, roadmaps, or token economics. Nevertheless, Usual's design concept and team background, especially founder Pierre Person's political background and experience in the crypto field, have brought significant market appeal (as of August 28, 2024, TVL is $210.19M). Currently, Usual's Pills (started in July, lasting for 4 months) activity is ongoing, and interested readers may take a look. This is only for analysis and discussion, not for recommendation or guidance.
免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。
