Can the new stablecoin Usual successfully challenge USDT?

Project Introduction

Usual Labs is a startup focused on stablecoin technology. Its founder, Pierre PERSON, is a French politician and member of parliament, and a leader in French crypto asset legislation.

Usual has currently received $7 million in seed round financing, led by IOSG Ventures and Kraken Ventures. Well-known second-layer network projects Starkware (Starknet Development Company) and Mantle are also on the list of investors.

The core product of the Usual protocol is the stablecoin USD0. Unlike traditional stablecoins (such as USDT and USDC), USD0 is issued with 1:1 support from RWA assets with extremely short maturity periods and assets such as national bonds, which makes it more secure and stable, and reduces the probability of being liquidated at a discount in the event of an asset run.

In Usual's introduction, Tether, the issuer of the stablecoin USDT, is used as an example and comparison. They believe that after issuing USDT, Tether did not return the profits of these stablecoins to users.

https://x.com/momir_amidzic/status/1812120424521822369

Tether's annual revenue of nearly $10B is only distributed to a few people, and its company has less than 100 employees. Therefore, Tether is often regarded as the most profitable technology company in the world.

What Usual has to do is to return the ownership of token issuance and the profits generated from it to users.

In Usual Protocol, users can obtain USD0 by depositing assets, which is equivalent to their deposit certificate (LDT) in the protocol.

Users holding USD0 can choose to lock it to provide liquidity, or issue Liquidity Bond Tokens (LBT), that is, convert USD0 into USD0++, so as to participate in the DeFi ecosystem and obtain corresponding benefits. This part of the income includes the airdrop of the project's own governance token $USUAL, as well as potential deposit income.

Usual cleverly designed the points voucher into a purple pill in its project design, and mentioned "Break free from the banking matrix", which is hard not to remind people of the sci-fi masterpiece "The Matrix" 20 years ago.

The Matrix is ​​a virtual reality system in "The Matrix". After the failure of the war between humans and robots, it controls and binds humans, making them unable to see the real world.

The concept of "Banking Matrix" proposed by Usual seems to be used to metaphorically describe the current banking system or centralized stablecoin issuing companies, suggesting that this system, like the virtual reality in "The Matrix", binds people and prevents them from seeing or experiencing the true potential and freedom of decentralized finance.

The purple pill as a score also echoes the red and blue pills in the movie. In the movie, the protagonist faces a choice:

• The red pill: represents escaping from the virtual reality system, even if the reality is painful, you must know the truth.

• The blue pill: represents the choice to continue living in the virtual comfortable illusion and not to break the status quo.

The purple pill designed by Usual is a mixture of red and blue, which seems to emphasize the choice of balance. This may mean that they will break the shackles of the traditional banking system or centralized institutions in a new and revolutionary way, but at the same time, Usual will also provide a safe and reliable stablecoin (USD0) to replace them.

This design contains both the meaning of awakening and change of the "red pill" and the meaning of security and stability provided by the "blue pill", which is quite interesting and novel.

Currently, Usual has announced the official launch of its mainnet on July 10, and simultaneously launched the points activity. Users can obtain points certificates Pills by providing liquidity or holding USD0++, which can be converted into $USUAL token airdrops in the future.

The number of airdrops issued will account for 7.5% of the total supply of Usual. The event will start at 22:30 on July 10, 2024 and last for 4 months. Let’s take a look at the specific steps of Usual interaction.

Project Interaction

1. Points Activity

https://app.usual.money/#SJYPG

First, open the project website above, or directly enter the invitation code "SJYPG" in the lower left corner.

Follow the official Twitter and connect your wallet as required.

Follow the prompts and keep going down. You will see the deposit interface. Users can choose to deposit assets at this step and turn them into USD0.

The deposit operations here are all on the ETH main network. If the current handling fee is high, you can also click "skip" in the upper right corner to temporarily skip it and make the deposit operation later.

The points reward rules are as shown above:

• Directly hold USD0++: Users can use USD0 to directly purchase USD0++, and each USD0++ can get 5 pills (one-time), and 3 pills every day thereafter;

• Provide liquidity: Users can add USD0/USDC or USD0/USD0++ LP in Curve, and each 1 USD of LP can get 1 or 3 pills every day.

If no operation is needed for the time being, you can skip it.

After all is completed, users can see their current number of pills and the number of pills they can get every day on the project homepage.

If you did not deposit assets in the previous steps and want to operate later, click "Drugstore" in the left sidebar to see the options of holding USD0++ and adding LP.

At the same time, you can also see a growth multiplier at the top of the page, that is, as the user deposits or provides LP for a longer time, the speed of obtaining pills will continue to accelerate.

It can increase by 2% every day, and can increase up to 10 times at the fastest. Of course, users can withdraw their assets at any time, but once withdrawn, the growth coefficient will be recalculated from 1, that is, the earlier the user deposits, the more pills they will get until the end of the event.

In addition to depositing pills, users can also participate in attracting new users and invite friends to join the event. For each friend invited, the inviter can get 10% of the total amount of the friend's pills as a reward.

2. Galaxy Activities

https://app.galxe.com/quest/usual

In addition to the pill collection activities on the official website, Usual also released a new "Pills Campaign" task in the Galaxy.

These are some common social tasks, which are relatively simple. Interested users can also participate