Djed Overview

Djed is a stablecoin protocol that is:

• crypto-backed: under normal conditions, every stablecoin is backed by an independent asset, with intrinsic value, for which it can be redeemed at any time.

  • robust against price shocks: its high-reserve ratio allows it to weather severe market downturns without losing the peg, in contrast to unbacked stablecoins.

  • capital efficient: in contrast to crypto-collateralized stablecoins, where the excess collateral remains idle, Djed's reserve surplus is represented by a token that can used elsewhere similarly to a liquid staking token.

  • any time redemption: every holder of crypto-backed stablecoins can redeem their stablecoins for a corresponding amount of reserves at any time, unlike crypto-collateralized stablecoins, which can only exchange their stablecoins for some amount of collateral in the event of liquidation.

• autonomous: once deployed to a blockchain, the protocol can run by itself, with no need to be operated by a third party. As a consequence of being autonomous, Djed can also be:

  • zero-governance: a deployment of Djed does not need to be governed by anyone.

  • immutable: a deployment and its parameters can remain unchanged, non-updatable, thus guaranteeing that no one will ever be able to update the contract's logic, in ways that could be undesirable or even malicious for those who hold funds in the contract.

  • rent-seeking free: since there is no need for a third party to operate a Djed deployment, there is also no need for any third party to extract abusive fees from the deployment. Djed deployments can become free and public infra-structure on the underlying blockchains.

• formally verified: stability theorems for version V1 (a.k.a. "Minimal Djed") have been formally proven using Isabelle and checked with bounded model checking using Lustre.

• empirically battle-tested: the longest-running deployment of Djed has been deployed in Q1 2021 and its stablecoin has never lost the peg, despite numerous severe market crashes experienced by the cryptocurrency industry.

• peer-reviewed: after a long and thorough peer-review process, the academic paper about the minimal version of Djed was accepted at the IEEE International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency.

Note that, although the protocol was designed with the intention to have the characteristics listed above, implementations and deployments of the protocol may diverge from these intentions.