Deep Dive on USDD (Decentralized USD)

Bitcoin Price Breaks $17,000 for First Time in Three Weeks, But Turbulent Week Ahead

What Is a Stablecoin?

## What Is USDD?

USDD is a [stablecoin](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/algorithmic-stablecoin) issued by the TRON DAO Reserve. It’s pegged to the value of the US dollar and aims to provide a reliable, decentralized cryptocurrency for [blockchain](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/blockchain) transactions. USDD can be used for payments, trading, [staking](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/staking) and as a value store.

USDD is backed by a number of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum and [TRON](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/what-is-tron). To ensure stability and security, the reserve is over-collateralized, meaning that it holds more assets than the amount of USDD currently in circulation.


## Who Are the Founders of USDD?

Justin Sun is the founder of the TRON, which is behind the USDD stablecoin. Launched on May 5, 2022, USDD is on the TRON blockchain and is also available on Ethereum and BNB Chain.


## What Makes USDD Unique?

USDD is issued and redeemed via smart contracts on TRON. This allows for fast and secure transactions, as well as transparent and verifiable records of USDD issuance and redemption. It also lets users join [staking pools](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/staking-pool). 

A decentralized community of stakeholders oversees the management and development of USDD, and makes decisions on behalf of the wider community via the TRON DAO Reserve (TDR). The TDR is the principal custodian of USDD and is responsible for preserving the value of the currency and maintaining a stable exchange rate. 

It was established as a separate financial organization to protect the Tron ecosystem against the effects of extended economic downturns, financial panic, and unstable exchange prices for both centralized and decentralized Tron stable currency. 

Its primary roles are as a lender of last resort, a regulator of risk-free interest rates, a manager of liquidity through the release and restriction of funds, and an implementer of monetary and exchange rate policies. 


### Related Pages:

Learn some more about [TRON](https://coinmarketcap.com/earn/project/tron) here. 

What is a [stablecoin](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/stablecoin)? Learn more with the [CMC glossary](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/decentralized-applications-dapps).

Check out our guide for how [DAOs](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/what-is-a-dao) fit into the crypto space. 

New to crypto? Check out [CoinMarketCap's educational portal](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria) to get the latest news and insights.


## How Many USDD Coins Are There in Circulation?

USDD stablecoin is intended to maintain a fixed exchange rate of 1:1 with the US dollar. This implies that for every USDD coin in circulation, a corresponding amount of US dollars is set aside in reserve. 

$2 billion worth of USDD has been authorized, while $1.25 billion worth of coins remain authorized but not yet issued. 

As of June 2023, the total supply of USDD is around $741K, and the total collateral is around $1.2 billion. These are mainly held in TRX, BTC and TUSD.


## How Is the USDD Network Secured?

Any stablecoin’s security relies heavily on the stability of the assets that underpin it. As such, the USDD protocol over-collateralizes the protocol with highly liquid assets, including BTC, TUSD and TRX. 

In order to keep the currency stable when its reserve assets’ values change as a result of adverse market conditions, the protocol’s monetary policy allows it to adjust the reserve asset ratios dynamically. 


## Where Can You Buy USDD?

USDD is listed on crypto exchanges, including [KuCoin](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/kucoin/), [PancakeSwap (V2)](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/pancakeswap-v2/), [Uniswap (V3)](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/uniswap-v3/), [SushiSwap](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/sushiswap/), [Gate.io](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/gate-io/), [Poloniex](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/poloniex/), [Huobi](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/huobi/), [Bybit](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/bybit/) and more.

USDD

Trust Wallet

MetaMask

Binance Chain Wallet

USDD is the first over-collateralized decentralized stablecoin transparent and fully backed by mainstream digital assets at all times.

Ethereum

Shiba Inu

Chainlink

UNUS SED LEO

Uniswap

The Graph

Maker

FLOKI

Fetch.ai

Ethena

Gala

Ondo

Bitget Token

Pendle

Immutable

Dogecoin20

Gorilla In A Coupe

Velar

Bit.Store

Lends

TUSD is the first digital asset with live on-chain attestations by independent third-party institutions and is backed 1:1 with the U.S. dollar (USD). So far, it has been listed on more than 100 trading platforms such as Binance and Huobi and is live on 12 mainstream public chains, including Ethereum, TRON, Avalanche, BSC, Fantom, and Polygon.

TrueUSD is attested to in real-time by an independent, industry-specialized accounting firm in the U.S., to ensure the 1:1 ratio of its USD reserve to the circulating token supply and the 100% collateral rate. With the integration of Chainlink PoR, TrueUSD becomes the first USD-Backed stablecoin to secure minting and further ensure transparency and reliability. Users can access the relevant data via the official website tusd.io at any time. TUSD is granted statutory status as authorized digital currency and medium of exchange in the Commonwealth of Dominica, a country in the Caribbean, effective on October 7th 2022.

TrueUSD

Founded in September of 2018, Pax Dollar is a flat-collateralized stablecoin. Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies that are designed to minimize the volatility of the price of the stablecoin, relative to a certain stable asset or a basket of assets.

A stablecoin can be pegged to a cryptocurrency or flat money. In some cases, it can even be traded for commodities. Pax Dollar offers the advantage of transacting with blockchain assets through minimized price risk. The Pax Dollar tokens (USDP) are issued asERC-20 tokens on the Ethereum blockchain and are collateralized 1:1 through the USD held in Paxos-owned US bank accounts.

Pax Dollar

The Gemini Trust Company (Gemini) is a digital currency exchange and custodian that allows you to buy, sell and store digital assets, founded in February of 2014. The GUSD is created by the cryptocurrency exchange Gemini.

The company received approval from the New York Department of Financial Services or NYDFS to launch the stablecoin in September of 2018. The Gemini Trust Company holds USD deposits that correspond to the number of tokens that are in circulation.

When it comes to the Gemini Dollar itself, it is an ERC-20 token that is built on the Ethereum network and has smart contracts that are audited by the security company Trail of Bits Inc.

This dollar is intended to bridge the divide between traditional finance and the crypto industry, due to the fact that this specific stablecoin is completely regulated by the NYDFS.

Gemini Dollar

DAI is an Ethereum-based stablecoin (stable-price cryptocurrency) whose issuance and development is managed by the Maker Protocol and the MakerDAO decentralized autonomous organization.

The price of DAI is soft-pegged to the U.S. dollar and is collateralized by a mix of other cryptocurrencies that are deposited into smart-contract vaults every time new DAI is minted.

It is important to differentiate between Multi-Collateral DAI and Single-Collateral DAI (SAI), an earlier version of the token that could only be collateralized by a single cryptocurrency; SAI also doesn’t support the DAI Savings Rate, which allows users to earn savings by holding DAI tokens.

Multi-Collateral DAI was launched in November 2019.

Tether Gold (XAU₮) is a stablecoin that provides ownership on a 1:1 basis of one fine troy ounce of gold on a physical bar of gold that meets the Good Delivery standard of the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA). This technology allows access to a stablecoin that provides ownership of physical gold while avoiding the drawbacks associated with physical gold, such as high storage cost and limited accessibility.
Note: XAU₮ tokens can be fractionated up to six decimal places (i.e. in increments as small as 0.000001 troy fine ounce).

Tether Gold

Fei protocol is a DeFi native algorithmic stablecoin. The aim of Fei is to propose a technological solution in a sweet spot between rigid overcollateralized decentralized stablecoin and centralised custodial stablecoins.

Fei Protocol runs on two crypto assets: FEI stablecoin and TRIBE governance token.

FEI is aimed to be a more capital efficient and fully decentralized stablecoin. The protocol uses the value it controls to maintain liquid secondary markets and earn yield for the protocol.

The project was founded in December 2020 and immediately attracted significant interest in the crypto community. It resulted in $19 million VC investment in early March 2021. Among the names that have entered this project are Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Coinbase Ventures, Nascent and Framework Ventures.

There were some issues with the peg in the original mechanism, but through a series of governance upgrades the protocol recovered in the months following launch.

Fei v2 intends to be a major upgrade for the system and will launch in late 2021. It features 1:1 redeemability for FEI against protocol reserves, TRIBE buybacks and backstop, and algorithmic protocol controlled value management.

Fei USD

First Digital USD

USDC is a stablecoin that is pegged to the U.S. dollar on a 1:1 basis. Every unit of this cryptocurrency in circulation is backed up by $1 that is held in reserve, in a mix of cash and short-term U.S. Treasury bonds. The Centre consortium, which is behind this asset, says USDC is issued by regulated financial institutions.

The stablecoin originally launched on a limited basis in September 2018. Put simply, USDC’s mantra is “digital money for the digital age” — and the stablecoin is designed for a world where cashless transactions are becoming more common.

Several use cases have been unveiled for the USDC. As well as providing a safe haven for crypto traders in times of volatility, those behind the stablecoin say it can also allow businesses to accept payments in digital assets, and shake up an array of sectors including decentralized finance and gaming.

Overall, the goal is to create an ecosystem where USDC is accepted by as many wallets, exchanges, service providers and dApps as possible.

USDC

Binance USD (BUSD) is a 1:1 USD-backed stable coin issued by Binance (in partnership with Paxos), Approved and regulated by the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS), The BUSD Monthly Audit Report can be viewed from the official website. Launched on 5 Sep 2019, BUSD aims to meld the stability of the dollar with blockchain technology. It is a digital fiat currency, issued as ERC-20 and supports BEP-2.

BUSD

Bitcoin SV (BSV) emerged following a hard fork of the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) blockchain in 2018, which had in turn forked from the BTC blockchain a year earlier following the blocksize wars.

BSV claims to fulfill the original vision of the Bitcoin protocol and design as described in Satoshi Nakamoto’s white paper, early Bitcoin client software and known Satoshi writings. BSV aims to offer scalability and stability in line with the original description of Bitcoin as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system, as well as deliver a distributed data network that can support enterprise-level advanced blockchain applications.

To this end, it has removed artificial block size limits and re-enabled Script commands and other technical capabilities which had been historically disabled or restricted by the protocol developers of the BTC blockchain. This purportedly allows the network to process tens of thousands of transactions per second while maintaining extremely low transaction fees for micropayments, in addition to offering advanced capabilities such as tokens, smart contracts, computation and other data use cases.

The BSV network claims to be unique in its capacity for unbounded on-chain scaling while also being more aligned with the original design of Bitcoin than any other blockchain.

Bitcoin SV

The Neutrino index is a decentralized financial (DeFi) platform based on the Waves blockchain. The platform rebranded its index token from USDN to XTN. Neutrino has two native tokens, XTN and NSBT.

XTN is an algorithmic crypto-collateralized indexcoin backed by three Waves Ecosystem tokens: WAVES, WX and VIRES. XTN's main function is to encourage user participation in the Neutrino by rewarding those who provide liquidity to the system.

The platform’s other token, NSBT (Neutrino System Base Token), is used for governance purposes: it allows users to make decisions about the future development of the Neutrino protocol, and it ensures the stability of collateral reserves on Neutrino’s smart contract.

New NSBT tokens are issued whenever a user locks WAVES tokens on a contract, which serves as additional backing and insures the system against a deficit. Holders can stake to earn on WAVES to XTN swap fees.

Neutrino Index

Pax Gold (PAXG) is a gold-backed cryptocurrency, launched by the creators of Paxos Standard (PAX) in September 2019. As an ERC-20 token operating on the Ethereum blockchain, Pax Gold is tradeable on a large variety of exchanges and has become an accessible way for traders to start investing in gold.

The main goal behind Pax Gold is to make gold more tradable, as the physical commodity is not easily divisible or flexible in terms of transport. This is why Paxos Standard decided to create a cryptocurrency entirely backed by gold. According to the official whitepaper, Pax Gold was created to allow investors to buy indefinitely small amounts of gold through the cryptocurrency, thus virtually eliminating minimum buy limits for the commodity.

PAX Gold

OKB is a cryptocurrency released by the OK Blockchain Foundation and Maltese crypto exchange, OKEx. The exchange is one of the largest in the world andcurrently ranks third in liquidity, fourth in trading volume, and provides a wide selection of trading pairs. OKEx is similar in many aspects to the cryptocurrency exchange giantBinance, but there are a few key differences. The OKEx platform has its owncloud mining service, and the company has a more focused reach in providing options trading for users. Meanwhile, Binance strives to offer a broad range of crypto services globally.

OKB is the OKEx utility token that enables users to access the crypto exchange's special features. The coin is used to calculate and pay trading fees, grant users access to voting and governance on the platform, and reward users for holding OKB.

OKEx has become a world-leading trading floor since its launch in 2017. The platform launched in the spring of 2017 and emerged as an offshoot from the original OKCoin platform (operating since 2013 in China). OKCoin now focuses on exchanging fiat for crypto, while OKEx focuses on crypto trading with a built-inAPI for algorithmic trading. The exchange also gives users access to a multi-currency wallet and functions formargin trading.

GateChain is a public blockchain which facilitates digital asset transfers, and claims to be “dedicated to asset safety.”

The network’s native token is GateToken (GT). It’s mainly used to pay transaction fees, but users can also stake it to validate transactions and secure the network in exchange for rewards.

GateChain offers an on-chain wallet for users to manage their digital assets directly on the network itself, thereby eliminating the need for a third-party wallet. It’s also fully integrated with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), making it easy to deploy Ethereum-based smart contracts on the platform.

GateToken

TerraUSD (UST) is the decentralized and algorithmicstablecoin of the Terra blockchain. It is a scalable, yield-bearing coin that is value-pegged to the US Dollar. TerraUSD was created to deliver value to the Terra community and offer a scalable solution forDeFi amid severe scalability problems faced by other stablecoin leaders likeDai. Thus, TerraUSD promises users a higher level of scalability, interest rate accuracy, and interchain usage.

TerraUSD provides several benefits that have made it a stand-out stablecoin competitor. Due to its minting mechanism, UST meets the requirements of DeFi protocols that it uses without losing scalability. UST can also be easily added to crypto wallets by simply integrating TerraUSD as a payment method. Another area where TerraUSD has shown its power isDApps. For example, platforms that mint fungible synthetic assets and track real-life asset prices use UST as a pricing benchmark.

TerraUSD (UST) was launched in September 2020 (in collaboration with Bittrex Global) and has since gained the reputation as the most scalable stablecoin. UST can be used in conjunction withLUNA, Terra's non-stablecoin crypto, or as a standalone token.

TerraClassicUSD

Gnosis (GNO) builds decentralized infrastructure on Ethereum. Its mission has always been centered on experimentation and building decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem. When Gnosis was founded in 2015, it focused on building prediction markets to enable worldwide access to accurate information. While creating the prediction market platform, it became clear that Gnosis needed to build the infrastructure required to support it. Gnosis Safe, for example, was born of necessity.

Gnosis operates as a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) which provides infrastructure for various types of decentralized applications (dApps), and builds products to transparently guide decisions on the development, support and governance of its ecosystem.

In November 2021, both the xDAI and GnosisDAO community voted to combine their vibrant ecosystems to create the Gnosis Chain: An Ethereum forerunner-companion that addresses scaling issues through solid engineering.

Gnosis

Rocket Pool is a decentralized Ethereum staking pool offering up to 4.33% APR for ETH2 staking. Users can join the Rocket Pool with its decentralized node operator network or run their own nodes with only 16 ETH. In the latter case, they can earn a commission from staking ETH and earn additional RPL rewards from providing RPL collateral, amounting to up to 6.36% APR for ETH and the additional RPL rewards.

Rocket Pool provides liquid staking, meaning users benefit from an increasing exchange rate instead of adding on to their initial staked collateral, which would be a taxable event. Furthermore, Rocket Pool offers smart nodes: a custom node software allowing anyone to run a node on its network. With losses from bad nodes distributed across the network, individual users minimize their risk of facing penalties. This is supported by the pool’s open-source and audited smart contracts, which guarantee fully non-custodial staking and a maximum degree of decentralization.

Rocket Pool

PayPal USD (PYUSD) is PayPal’s stablecoin, issued by Paxos.
Fully backed and regulated | 1 USD : 1 PYUSD

PayPal USD

KCS is the native token of KuCoin, which was launched back in 2017 as a profit-sharing token that allows traders to draw value from the exchange. It was issued as an ERC-20 token running on the Ethereum network and was supported by most Ethereum wallets. The total supply of KCS was set at 200 million, and there is a planned buyback and burn until just 100 million KCS remain. Sooner or later, as the KuCoin decentralized trading solution goes live, KCS will be the native asset of KuCoin's decentralized financial services as well as the governance token of the KuCoin community in the future.

KuCoin has also announced that “Empowering KCS'' will be a key priority of KuCoin and will build KCS as a killer product rather than a simple token, which is bound to further diversify the benefits that KCS holders can access. In the long run, KCS performs as the key to the entire KuCoin ecosystem. With the development of DEX and KuChain, KCS will also be the underlying fuel and general token for future KuCoin decentralized products. More details will likely be released in the near future.