⏱️History

Context

The cryptocurrency industry was born with the goal to build decentralized forms of money. However, for an asset to actually be able to perform the functions of money as a unit of account, a store of value and a means of exchange, its price must be stable. This is why as early as at least 2014, various stablecoin protocols were already being proposed, although it was only around 2018 that the adoption of stablecoins really started to take off. Stablecoins are crucial for the cryptocurrency industry, not only due to the industry's primordial goal, but also because they are a foundational component in decentralized finance (DeFi).

The Beginning (2020)

By 2020, much had been learned from previous stablecoin designs, their strengths and weaknesses. Humbly leveraging these learnings, the creation of a new stablecoin protocol, with simplicity and transparency as key design goals, started in 2020 by a collaboration team comprising researchers and engineers who were then affiliated with Ergo, Emurgo and Input Output: Dr. Bruno Woltzenlogel Paleo (a.k.a. Zahnentferner), Alexander Chepurnoy (a.k.a. Kushti), Nicolas Arqueros and Robert Kornacki. Implementations for the Ergo and Cardano ecosystems were planned and they were provisionally named, respectively, AgeUSD and BelUSD after the Egyptian myth of the twin brothers Agenor and Belus.

First Deployment - SigmaUSD on Ergo (2021)

In February 2021, the first production-ready implementation, with ErgoScript smart contracts developed by Amitabh Saxeena, backend developed by Robert Kornacki and UI developed by anon-real, was deployed by Darkside to the Ergo blockchain under the name SigmaUSD (instead of AgeUSD). It survived all the cryptocurrency industry's market crashes since its launch without losing its stability. Ergo is a next-generation smart contract platform that ensures the economic freedom of ordinary people through secure, accessible and decentralized financial tools. Notably, Ergo uses Proof-of-Work and UTxO (like Bitcoin), but extends it in a way that makes it possible and convenient (unlike Bitcoin) to develop expressive smart contracts. SigmaUSD is, to the best of our knowledge, the first deployment of a stablecoin protocol on a UTxO-based blockchain, and SigmaUSD was the first major decentralized application developed on Ergo, paving the way for Ergo's current vibrant and innovative DeFi ecosystem.

First Paper and the "Djed" Name (2021)

Research and development progressed in parallel with daily asynchronous communication among all researchers and engineers in the initial collaboration team. Research was led by Zahnentferner, who was soon joined by Dr. Dmytro Kaidalov. Although the abstract mathematical specification of the minimal version of the protocol was ready as early as Q4 2020, stating and proving the stability theorems took several months. In Q2 2021, Zahnentferner and Dr. Kaidalov were joined by Javier Díaz and Dr. Jean-Frédéric Etienne, who were responsible, respectively, for the formal verification and bounded model checking of the protocol. In July 2021, the technical white paper was released to the public and Zahnentferner named the protocol Djed, after an ancient Egyptian pillar-like symbol representing stability.

Implementations in Solidity and Plutus (2021 -- 2022)

In 2021, some of the engineers from the original collaboration team founded dcSpark, a major player in the Cardano ecosystem, especially in the area of developer tooling and wallets. They built Milkomeda, the EVM-compatible sidechain of Cardano, with all the necessary ingredients for a seamless and frictionless experience for Solidity developers to build projects for the Cardano ecosystem. Together with VacuumLabs and one other anonymous entity, and a grant from Cardano's decentralized Catalyst grant, they implemented the Djed stablecoin protocol in the Solidity smart contract language and deployed it to a testnet of Milkomeda in February 2022. In 2021 and 2022, Input Output and COTI developed an implementation of Djed in the Plutus smart contract language for Cardano, a top Proof-of-Stake UTxO-based blockchain. Input Output is the main company developing Cardano and the Plutus language. This implementation counted with Djed whitepaper co-author Dr. Jean-Frédéric Etienne as the main developer and it demonstrates several major features and design patterns of Plutus.

The Creation of the Djed Alliance (2022)

In February 2022, Zahnentferner founded the Djed Alliance. Its goal is to bring reliable stability to the cryptocurrency industry and its main approach to achieve this mission is to foster the evolution and adoption of the Djed stablecoin protocol and to support implementations and deployments of the protocol. The Djed Alliance is an open network. All it takes to be part of it is to have contributed to the Djed stablecoin protocol in some form and to collaborate with others in the alliance towards the alliance's mission.

Djed Osiris (2022)

In Q3 and Q4 of 2022, contributors from Bloxico and AOSSIE (together with dcSpark and VacuumLabs) refactored the Solidity implementation for Milkomeda to a new version (Osiris) of the protocol, taking into account lessons learned from Ergo's SigmaUSD's two years of success and paving the way for deployments on various EVM-compatible blockchains, including Milkomeda.

Thought Leadership and Technical Research on Stablecoins (from 2022)

From 2022, the Djed Alliance has been establishing itself as thought leader in stablecoins by publishing study reports in collaboration the Blockchain Governance Initiative Network (BGIN), delving into regulatory and wider social aspects of stablecoins.

On the technical side, a research collaboration between Dr. Zahnentferner and Prof. Giselle Reis and her students from CMU Qatar, to investigate variants of Djed as well as formally verified oracles started in Q2 2022 and is currently ongoing. It has already resulted in various papers and presentations, and culminated on a Sui Academic Research Award by the Sui Foundation in Q4 2023.

In February 2023, after a long and thorough peer-review process, an academic paper about the minimal version of Djed, authored by Zahnentferner, Dmytro Kaidalov, Javier Díaz and Jean-Frédéric Etienne, was accepted at the IEEE International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency.

In July 2023, Gluon, a new stabilization protocol has been partially unveiled.

Deployments on Cardano (2023)

The first half of 2023 saw two new deployments of Djed-based or Djed-inspired stablecoins on the Cardano ecosystem. The first one was Djed powered by COTI, based on the above-mentioned Plutus implementation. The second one was Milkomeda Djed Osiris, based on the above-mentioned Solidity implementation.

HodlCoin (2023)

In 2023, Dr. Bruno Woltzenlogel Paleo invented hodlCoin, a staking protocol with a self-stabilizing effect due to a mechanism that disincentivizes staking and mathematical proof that this mechanism causes the price to always increase. This protocol was implemented and deployed on Ergo by pulsarz and later by mgpai and lgd as well. This marked our organization's expansion beyond stablecoins.

Zephyr (2023)

In the second half of 2023, a fourth Djed stablecoin was launched and named Zephyr, after the ancient Greek god of the west wind. Zephyr is a private stablecoin, combining the privacy features of Monero with the stability of Djed. Furthermore, it is the first time that the Djed protocol has been implemented natively in a blockchain's ledger rules. Zephyr is also based on a new variant version of Djed (named Shu) that takes not one but two oracles into account, one providing the latest price and one providing a moving average of the price, in order to be more resilient against potential oracle delays and price manipulations.

The Stable Order and the Stability Nexus (2024)

The continuing growth and organizational maturity of the Djed Alliance led to the formation of The Stable Order and the Stability Nexus. The Djed Alliance continues to exist as the union of all teams working on Djed-based stablecoins and its mission is narrowed down to be focused on the Djed stablecoin protocol only. The Stable Order creates and abides to a code of honor for collaborative work towards greater stability in the world. And the Stability Nexus becomes the most general and open set of people connected around the concept of Stability.

HodlCoin's Expansion to Alephium (2024)

In the first half of 2024, hodlCoin was implemented and deployed on the Alephium blockchain.

Ethereum Classic Stable Dollar (2024)

In 2024, supported by a grant from the ETC Grants DAO, funded by Bitmain, Antpool and the ETC cooperative, The Stable Order developed Ethereum Classic Stable Dollar, the 5th Djed-based stablecoin and the first on an EVM-compatible main chain. Ethereum Classic is also the first ever EVM-compatible chain, upholding the original values of the cryptocurrency movement (immutability, algorithmic decentralization, code is law, ...), which are deeply aligned with the principles of The Stable Order.

The Future

The Stable Order and the Djed Alliance keep growing beyond the original collaboration team and we welcome new collaborators who would like to work together to achieve our mission.