## What are Reserve Coins?


In simple terms, Reserve Coins are digital tokens that maintain the algorithmic peg of stablecoins. By trading Reserve Coins, users can contribute to the stablecoin mechanism by providing the appropriate liquidity to maintain a sufficient peg ratio. By utilizing a reserve, base fees can be charged, collected, and pooled for transactions facilitated by the underlying stablecoin. Reserve Coin holders then get a share of this transaction pool as an incentive for their participation in maintaining the stablecoin peg ratio.
Before the launch of Djed, we will be implementing a Reserve Coin that will serve this function of maintaining Djed’s peg and liquidity stability. 

## What is Shen (SHEN)?

Continuing with the ancient Egyptian theme, we picked Shen as the name for Djed’s Reserve Coin. The Shen is a symbol of both royalty and symmetry. It has a deep connection with infinity, eternity, protection, and completeness given its circularity.

During our brainstorming sessions, we found this name to convey the characteristics and properties of Djed’s Reserve Coin appropriately.

By buying and selling Shen, users are able to maintain Djed’s USD currency peg while earning a share of transaction fees in the reserve pool. Since the Reserve Coin is a tradable asset, holders can also profit from the short-mid term price fluctuations as an added incentive.

## What Is Djed (DJED)?

Djed is the first over collateralized crypto-backed algorithmic [stablecoin](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/what-is-a-stablecoin) contract on the Cardano network. It operates by keeping a reserve of base coins (ADA), and minting and burning stablecoins and reserve coins. The contract maintains the peg of stablecoins to a target price by buying and selling stablecoins, using the reserve, and charging fees, which accumulate in the reserve. The ultimate beneficiaries of this revenue stream are holders of reserve coins, who boost the reserve with funds while assuming the risk of price fluctuation.

### Who Are the Founders of Djed?

Djed [research paper](https://eprint.iacr.org/2021/1069.pdf) was written and developed by the IOG team (Joachim Zahnentferner,Dmytro Kaidalov,Jean-Frédéric Etienne,Javier Roberto Diaz) and is powered by [Coti](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/coti/).



### What Makes Djed Unique?

DJED is the first formally verified stablecoin protocol. The use of formal methods in the programming process has greatly contributed to the design and stability properties of Djed. Using formal techniques, the properties are proven by mathematical theorems:

*Peg upper and lower bound maintenance: the price will not go above or beyond the set price. In the normal reserve ratio range, purchases and sales are not restricted, and users have no incentive to trade stablecoins outside the peg range in a secondary market.

*Peg robustness during market crashes: up to a set limit that depends on the reserve ratio, the peg is maintained even when the price of the base coin falls sharply.

*No insolvency: no bank is involved, so there is no bank contract to go bankrupt.

*No bank runs: all users are treated fairly and paid accordingly, so there is provably no incentive for users to race to redeem their stablecoins.

*Monotonically increasing equity per reserve coin: under some conditions, the reserve surplus per reserve coin is guaranteed to increase as users interact with the contract. Under these conditions, reserve coin holders are guaranteed to profit.

*No reserve draining: under some conditions, it is impossible for a malicious user to execute a sequence of actions that would steal reserves from the bank.

*Bounded dilution: there is a limit to how many reserve coin holders and their profit can be diluted due to the issuance of more reserve coins.


### Related Pages:

Learn more about Djed algorithmic stable coin [here](https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2021/08/18/djed-implementing-algorithmic-stablecoins-for-proven-price-stability/)

Learn more about Djed and Shen mechanism [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq_1DOrsXGU)


New to cryptocurrency? Find all the information you need with [Alexandria](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/categories/crypto-basics), CoinMarketCap’s dedicated education resource.


### How did Djed manage to keep its peg?

Djed’s algorithm is based on a collateral ratio in the range of 400%-800% for $Djed and $Shen. ADA prices fluctuations are offset by Shen, covering shortfalls and guaranteeing the collateralization rate.

The ADA reserve pool is not managed by market makers, but by users who mint the $Shen reserve coin and add ADA to the pool. This provides a decentralized aspect to the $Djed mechanism. $Shen holders are incentivized to provide liquidity through fees.

As $Djed can be over collateralized (up to 8x), the risk of $Djed being unpegged decreases. This means that for every 1 $Djed minted, there are 3–7 dollars worth of $ADA in the reserve pool. If the ratio falls below 400%, users will not be able to mint $Djed, and $Shen holders won’t be able to burn their $Shen. So in the event of a market dip there is a security blanket for $Djed holders that ensures its sustainability. The minting of new $Shen is also supervised in order to maintain the balances stabilized, and ensure there will always be enough ADA in the pool to provide a dollar equivalent value to the $Djed when burning it.


### Where Can You Buy Djed (DJED)?

You can mint DJED and SHEN directly from its [platform](https://djed.xyz/) or on any Cardano top DEXs. 

New to crypto? Read our [easy guide](https://coinmarketcap.com/how-to-buy-bitcoin/) to buying Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies."

Shen

Daedalus

Lace

Cardano

Snek

IAGON

Minswap

Book.io

Indigo Protocol

Hosky Token

KubeCoin

AdaSwap

COTI markets itself as the first enterprise-grade fintech platform that empowers organizations to build their own payment solutions as well as digitize any currency to save time as well as money.

COTI is one of the world’s first blockchain protocols that is optimized for decentralized payments and designed for use by merchants, governments, payment DApps and stablecoin issuers.

COTI Pay is the first application. It describes itself as a fully encompassing finance on the blockchain. The COTI Group launched in March of 2017, while the Staking Platform Launched on Jan. 1, 2020.

It is an ecosystem that is designed specifically to meet all of the challenges associated with traditional finance, including latency, fees, global inclusion and risks. This is done through the introduction of the DAG-based protocol as well as infrastructure that is completely scalable, private, inclusive and fast.

The ecosystem has DAG-based blockchain, proof-of-trust consensus algorithm, multiDAG, GTS (Global Trust System), a universal payment solution and a payment gateway.

COTI

Doric Network

BoutsPro

Yobit Token

SingularityNET is a blockchain-powered platform that allows anybody to easily "create, share, and monetize" AI services, thanks to its globally-accessible AI marketplace.

Through the SingularityNET marketplace, users can browse, test and purchase a huge variety of AI services using the platform’s native utility token — AGIX. Moreover, the marketplace represents an outlet AI developers can use to publish and sell their AI tools, and easily track their performance.

With the benefits of LLMs and generative AI are increasingly exciting, their limitations are also becoming increasingly apparent. The convergence of structured knowledge with neural networks is emerging as the key to overcoming their shortcomings.

Uniquely positioned at the heart of this convergence, SingularityNET will prioritize the integration of Knowledge Graphs (KGs) and comprehensive Neural Symbolic tools for LLMs, with the goal of empowering developers to create the next generation of AI systems on the SingularityNET Platform.

SingularityNET is strategically positioned to become the Knowledge Layer of the Internet, leading the evolution of the emerging AI landscape while also laying the foundations for the Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) of tomorrow.

The team behind SingularityNET pioneered the development of an AI known as Sophia, which is described as the "world's most expressive robot". SingularityNET’s goal is to enable Sophia to be able to fully understand human language, and continue developing “OpenCog” — an AI framework that is hoped to eventually achieve a state known as “advanced general intelligence,” i.e. human-level artificial intelligence (or beyond).

The platform was first announced in 2017 and completed an initial coin offering (ICO) in December the same year, raising $36 million in just one minute.

SingularityNET

VinDax Coin

Graviocoin

Cardano is a proof-of-stake blockchain platform that says its goal is to allow “changemakers, innovators and visionaries” to bring about positive global change.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Cardano.

The open-source project also aims to “redistribute power from unaccountable structures to the margins to individuals” — helping to create a society that is more secure, transparent and fair.

Cardano was founded back in 2017, and named after the 16th century Italian polymath Gerolamo Cardano. The native ADA token takes its name from the 19th century mathematician Ada Lovelace, widely regarded as the world’s first computer programmer. The ADA token is designed to ensure that owners can participate in the operation of the network. Because of this, those who hold the cryptocurrency have the right to vote on any proposed changes to the software.

The team behind the layered blockchain say that there have already been some compelling use cases for its technology, which aims to allow decentralized apps and smart contracts to be developed with modularity.

In August 2021, Charles Hoskinson announced the launch of the Alonzo hard fork, causing Cardano price to surge, gaining 116% in the following month. On Sept. 12, 2021, the Cardano ‘Alonzo’ hard fork officially launched, bringing smart contract functionality to the blockchain. Over 100 smart contracts were deployed in the following 24 hours after the launch.

Cardano is used by agricultural companies to track fresh produce from field to fork, while other products built on the platform allow educational credentials to be stored in a tamper-proof way, and retailers to clamp down on counterfeit goods.

Humaniq

Ycash

EOSDT

Grin

Theta (THETA) is a blockchain powered network purpose-built for video streaming. Launched in March 2019, the Theta mainnet operates as a decentralized network in which users share bandwidth and computing resources on a peer-to-peer (P2P) basis. The project is advised by Steve Chen, co-founder of YouTube and Justin Kan, co-founder of Twitch.

Theta features its own native cryptocurrency token, THETA, which performs various governance tasks within the network, and counts Google, Binance, Blockchain ventures, Gumi, Sony Europe and Samsung as Enterprise validators, along with a Guardian network of thousands of community-run guardian nodes.

Developers say that the project aims to shake up the video streaming industry in its current form — centralization, poor infrastructure and high costs mean that end users often end up with a poor experience. Content creators likewise earn less revenue due to the barriers between them and end users.

The Theta team has created a customer-centric business plan for their growing ecosystem of services focused on esports, music, TV, movies, and education. The list of Theta Network partners includes video platforms like Samsung VR, Cinedigm, Shout! Factory, Pandora.tv, Play Labs, and THETA.tv.

Wrapped THETA

BRCP TOKEN

SingularityDAO

MiL.k

GMX is a decentralized exchange (DEX) for trading perpetual cryptocurrency futures with up to 50X leverage on popular cryptocurrencies like BTC, ETH and more. The platform launched in September 2021 as Gambit Exchange. To date, GMX has a total trading volume of over $130B and 283K total users, making it the leading derivatives DEX on Arbitrum and Avalanche.

GMX runs on the Arbitrum and the Avalanche blockchain. These ecosystems are connected to the exchange via Synapse — a cross-chain bridge.

Anchor Protocol is a lending and borrowing protocol offering up to 19.5% yield on stablecoin deposits. Lenders can deposit their UST and earn attractive rates on their investments while simultaneously benefiting from low volatility. Borrowers can turn their LUNA collateral into productive assets without giving up control of it.

Anchor Protocol can thus attract risk-averse investors looking for high-yield, low-volatility investments and increase demand for UST. This advances the adoption of UST as a stablecoin and subsequently the adoption of the Terra project in DeFi. With the increasing adoption of Terra, whose founders are behind the launch of Anchor Protocol, the price of LUNA will increase.

Anchor Protocol

Arweave is a decentralized storage network that seeks to offer a platform for the indefinite storage of data. Describing itself as "a collectively owned hard drive that never forgets," the network primarily hosts "the permaweb" — a permanent, decentralized web with a number of community-driven applications and platforms.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Arweave.

The Arweave network uses a native cryptocurrency, AR, to pay "miners" to indefinitely store the network's information.

The project was first announced as Archain in August 2017, later rebranding to Arweave in February 2018 and officially launching in June 2018.