I saw the announcement and was quite surprised.
https://x.com/IPN_Intelligent/status/2069601671731380351
Aside from USDI, will the team continue working to introduce stablecoins, or has it completely decided to step away from the DeFi space?
I’m also curious how much effort and resources we have invested in bringing stablecoins to the ecosystem, and why there has been no tangible outcome so far.
hi CDEX, didn’t see anyone else commenting to wanted to address your question.
I wanted to ask if you could share how you reconcile your surprise that USDI is shutting down with “there has been no tangible outcome so far.” It would help me to understand how you view things if you could take a moment to explain this.
From my understanding USDI did take a considerable amount of effort to set up, and after 2 years the IPN team found it was not a successful business endeavor for them.
Stablecoins seem like a power law distribution, there is USDC, USDT, and then there is everything else.
USDI is an example of the challenges faced by other stablecoins. USDI was available on CKB for 2 years, and never gained much traction. In my reading of the situation, it is clear that users didn’t want to transact in USDI. I am sure there are many reasons that can be examined here, but the premise is the same. There is USDC, USDT, and then there is everything else.
Addressing your question, there is effort now to bring bridged USDC or USDT to CKB, and work to connect with other small stablecoin issuers, however, I want to set expectations that these may face similar adoption challenges as those seen by USDI, and as an ecosystem, we cannot control the decisions of those stablecoin issuers or infrastructure operators.
The true goal in regard to stablecoins, in my opinion, is to demonstrate the strength of an ecosystem to a sufficient degree that Circle or Tether become interested to deploy USDC or USDT natively. For the forseeable future, this to me is the most effective path to pursue.
CKB is a one-of-a-kind blockchain, Fiber is a one-of-a-kind technology for settling asset transfers and interchanges. We now need to demonstrate the user activity and adoption to attract those issuers to CKB. This is a topic for another post. Appreciate your interest in this subject and looking forward to speaking more about this.
(Edit after posting: I noticed you mentioned Defi. To me, Defi is synonymous with the account model. Once we enter the UTXO world, all designs need to change. You can check out CCH (Cross-chain hub in Fiber), which allows for swaps of BTC and CKB/UDTs in channels. This kind of development direction to me is how Defi on CKB is properly implemented, rather than trying to copy designs which have been made for the account model and global state)
Thanks to Force Bridge we had bridged USDT and USDC for many years:
They had less activity than USDI:
Let’s also remember that USDI was initially backed by a MatrixPort agreement, so it was a real Native Nervos stablecoin. Just, later on, it morphed into a bridged USDC: Spark Program | Ckb-probe: Deep Observability Tool for CKB Nodes Based on Aya Kernel eBPF/ckb-probe：基于 Aya 内核 eBPF 的 CKB 节点深度可观测性工具 - #12 by zz_tovarishch
Speaking of bridged stablecoins, neither USDT nor USDC will ever be bridged by Rosen Bridge cause they have very real risks of frozen assets: Telegram: View @USDTBanList
On the bright side, once Rosen Bridge is active, it could bridge to Nervos L1 stablecoins like LUSD v1, which are battle tested over time.
Cheers, Phroi
What worries me isn’t the shutdown of USDI itself. What worries me is that, in every cycle, the few projects that manage to survive ultimately end up shutting down instead of becoming lasting parts of the ecosystem.
A new cycle begins → new building starts → people realize the ecosystem infrastructure is incomplete, slowing the development of new projects → they spend time building the missing foundations (such as stablecoins and DeFi) → by the time the ecosystem components finally work together, most of the cycle has already passed → the cycle ends → the projects shut down…
Every cycle starts from scratch. That’s what we should be thinking about.
It’s normal for many people and projects to leave during a bear market, and many new ones will also come in during a bull market. But our ecosystem needs accumulation and continuity. Otherwise, when the market recovers, the CKB ecosystem still won’t be an attractive option for newcomers—it will only remain a token that follows the market cycle’s speculation.
We need to ask ourselves why we haven’t retained these projects. Is it because we haven’t communicated a compelling long-term vision, causing them to lose confidence as soon as they encountered difficulties? Or is it because we’ve lacked communication with them and failed to provide the support they needed during their development?
Whatever the answer, it feels like someone needs to take on the role of coordinating these efforts—communicating a shared long-term vision, coordinating collaboration among projects, and driving the ecosystem forward as a whole.
I broadly agree that native USDC or USDT is the path that really solves the compliance and fiat-ramp side of the stablecoin problem. LUSD is a valid option from a bridge-risk perspective, especially because it avoids the central issuer freeze surface. But it is not a straightforward substitute for native USDC/USDT, because the fiat on/off-ramp UX is much longer, users may need to bridge back, swap, redeem into ETH or another liquid asset, then go through an exchange or OTC route to actually cash out.
The Cardano example may be useful here as well.
They did not jump straight to full native USDC/USDT, but USDCx shows a practical intermediate path, by having an issuer-recognised, USDC-backed asset with clearer reserve logic and better cross-chain liquidity than a normal third-party bridge.
No one has mentioned demand. Where does the demand for stablecoins on CKB come from? What is the user activity level on CKB? How many users does CKB have? So, is it true that stablecoins alone cannot achieve scale?
If CKB has a large user base, the difference between using a bridged stablecoin and a native stablecoin is merely a matter of user experience, not a matter of whether there is a demand for it.
To this day, CKB has never considered how to attract players (infrastructure needs to be used on a large scale to be considered infrastructure). Demand drives developers to create, or rather, developers create applications that truly attract users. Essentially, it’s a cycle: attracting developers and attracting players are the two ends that drive this cycle forward.
I think we should be careful not to mistake generic, unevidenced criticism for strategic analysis.
I would argue from my vantage point that it is practical realities of early stage innovation. Ckb.pw, .bit, UTXO Stack.. they were all sold on the vision but failed to turn the innovative technology into commercial success. It takes some false starts, communication can help but it will not change the challenge.
We face a two sided market (cold start) problem, as others have said in this thread, the real question is “how do we increase on-chain activity?”
Just saw @neon.bit posting this in Nervos Nation Telegram, it could be pretty interesting to join:
Introducing Open USD: a stablecoin built for the internet economy, designed by the businesses growing it.
Pretty big names backing it,
Phroi
Hi Guys, I’m glad my question got attention, and thanks @matt_ckb for taking the time to respond.
To clarify, I was surprised that USDI seemed to be the only concrete stablecoin attempt on CKB so far, yet it is now disappearing almost without leaving a visible trace.
From the outside, it feels as if USDI only existed in announcements: it was announced, it existed for a while, and now it is being discontinued. But it is hard to see what lasting liquidity, user habit, developer integration, or stablecoin strategy it has left behind.
So when I said “there has been no tangible outcome so far,” I meant that after all this effort, CKB still does not seem to have a stablecoin solution that users and builders can rely on.
My concern is less about USDI alone, and more about whether CKB has a clear and continuous stablecoin strategy after USDI.
Hi @phroi, thanks for sharing this.
Open USD looks interesting, especially if there are serious names backing it and if it is designed as a more open stablecoin standard.
Will we try to engage with Open USD or explore bringing it to CKB?
That sounds great, but does CKB currently have anything compelling enough to attract a consortium like this?
Yes, @zz_tovarishch has already reached out.
unrivaled potential : D
That’s great. Hopefully, the initial contact will make it easier to get them interested in CKB.