Decommission USDC as collateral for baoUSD

Summary

The proposal aims to decommission USDC as collateral for Bao Markets

Background

USDC was included as collateral for baoUSD during alpha testing before bSTBL was launched, and the community decided on what the finished product for baoUSD should look like. As the community aims to make baoUSD the best-decentralized stablecoin, the collaterals that can be used should be restricted to ones that will always have liquidity on Ethereum and are decentralized. While USDC is a market leader, there is no guarantee that it will always be. Additionally, USDC is centralized and controlled by an organization that must adhere to requests from regulators or law enforcement in their jurisdiction. It will be easier to remove it as collateral now than in the future when many positions are using it to mint baoUSD that will have no reason to close their positions. This prevents the community from altering the collaterals that back baoUSD if needed, as they can with bSTBL.

Instead of using USDC to mint baoUSD, users will need to use bSTBL, which can change its underlying assets to any stablecoins the community chooses to have backing baoUSD. While this includes USDC for the time being, it will be easy for the community to change to a more decentralized option when the time is right.

Decentralized stablecoins that use centralized collateral are subject to the same risks as centralized stables. Removing USDC collateral will solidify our intentions to become a market-leading decentralized stablecoin.

Goals

  • Improve decentralization of collaterals for baoUSD by removing USDC before it becomes widely used.

Proposed Solution

Risks

bSTBL is less widely used than USDC. Removing USDC may increase the barrier to entry for baoUSD, however, we have seen most of the baoUSD minted using bSTBL collateral, so the impact is expected to be minimal.

2 Likes

I’m fine with this, I do not think that we can say that we are a protocol that advocates for decentralization or moving power into the hands of people while also utilizing assets from those same centralized agencies we hope to take it from.

I also believe that we are in a time when people are searching for good decentralized alternatives.

2 Likes