Two New Stablecoins to Cardano

Two stablecoins are expected to arrive in the Cardano community in early 2023. DJED, the algorithmic stablecoin from Coti, and USDA, the fully backed and regulated stablecoin from Emurgo, are each being built using Cardano smart contracts and will become the first stablecoins for the Cardano ecosystem.

The arrival of DJED has been a long-time coming, while the USDA project was recently announced in November 2022. Both projects come behind the failed Ardana stablecoin project, leaving the Cardano community still in need of a functioning stablecoin. If we’ve learned anything in 2022, it's that not all stablecoins are created equal. 

DJED is a highly anticipated and hotly contested new stablecoin originally announced in 2021. The Coti team designed, tested, and audited the coin to act as an autonomous bank by using a formal price verification process to remove volatility. 

DJED is expected to be an over-collateralized algorithmic stablecoin, which the Coti team hopes will help solve the previous problems seen at TerraLUNA. DJED will use the reserve currency $SHEN to over-collateralize upwards of 800% to help sustain the DJED peg.

The DJED stablecoin development does not come with much investor confidence. Algorithmic stablecoins have proven very difficult to develop in the past. The recent scars in the industry left by the dramatic failure of the TerraLUNA project have left many in the community asking if the approach is the best idea. The failed Ardana stablecoin project, apart from running out of funds and also cited the difficulty of development on the Cardano blockchain.

DJED plans to enrich the Cardano ecosystem in several ways. For example, a Djed Pay decentralized application (Dapp) has been teased.

The Cardano Community also expects the arrival of USDA, a U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin coming on the Anzens platform in January 2023. Emurgo, the founding company behind Cardano, is expected to release the fully fiat-backed and regulatory-compliant algorithmic stablecoin. 

USDA will bring the Cardano ecosystem several fiat-based use cases and work to bring institution interests easier on-ramps into the ecosystem. The coin can be used for lending and borrowing and can also back crypto card payments. Emurgo will use US-based financial institutions to reserve USDA and ensure compliance.

The DeFi ecosystem sits with merely $60M in market capitalization and at #30 overall, according to DefiLlama. The new stablecoins can help boost the decentralized finance (DeFi) community within the Cardano ecosystem by bringing in dollar-backed reserves and more activity. At a minimum, Cardano will need to build out its ecosystem as well.

The DJED coin will have to overcome the stigma surrounding algorithmic coins and will do well to ease into integration. The usage of DJED will be reflective of how big the Cardano community can grow. 

The USDA coin will expect to help bridge the gap between TradFi and DeFi. If Cardano can build out workable and accessible Dapps, USDA can potentially bring more activity into the ecosystem with its many use cases for users and large players.