What is asUSD?
The Credit Primitive
asUSD is credit that exists entirely on Ethereum—not a wrapped dollar, not an algorithmic experiment, but actual lending demand tokenized into a stablecoin.
Every asUSD in circulation represents someone paying for capital efficiency:
Traders leveraging positions at 10-30% APR
Protocols bootstrapping liquidity
Users seeking better capital efficiency than traditional lending
Unlike USDC (your dollar in Circle's bank) or DAI (your collateral backing someone's loan), asUSD makes YOU the credit provider—earning yields from actual borrowing demand.
The Facilitator Framework
asUSD emerges from specialized minting engines called Facilitators, each operating within mathematically enforced boundaries:
Total asUSD Supply = Sum of all Facilitator Buckets
Each Bucket = Independent strategy with isolated riskCurrent Facilitators:
Astera Lend: Overcollateralized loans (largest capacity)
Liquidity AMOs: Bootstrap protocol liquidity (medium capacity)
Arbitrage AMOs: Maintain peg stability (limited capacity)
Each Facilitator has a "bucket" with:
Capacity: Maximum asUSD it can mint
Level: Current amount minted
Available: Remaining mintable amount
If one Facilitator fails, others continue unaffected. Risk doesn't cascade—it's contained.
Why asUSD is Different
USDC/USDT
Banks & auditors
Frozen reserves, bank failures
0%
DAI/USDS
Governance votes
3-7 day delays, parameter risk
Limited
Algorithmic
Game theory
Death spirals
Unsustainable
asUSD
Math & code
Isolated, contained
10-30%
The Three Pillars of asUSD
1. Autonomous Stability
No governance votes or manual interventions. Interest rates adjust every block based on market conditions. When demand spikes, rates rise. When supply exceeds demand, rates normalize. Pure mathematics, no politics.
2. Sustainable Yield
10-30% APR from real economic activity:
Borrowers paying interest
Arbitrageurs capturing spreads
Protocols paying for liquidity
Not token emissions. Not ponzinomics. Actual credit demand.
3. Isolated Risk
Each Facilitator operates independently. Experimental strategies can't contaminate core operations. New collateral types can't endanger existing positions. Risk flows one direction: down.
The Credit Layer Vision
asUSD isn't trying to be another stablecoin. It's building the credit layer for DeFi:
For Users: Earn what banks traditionally captured
For Protocols: Access instant liquidity without dilution
For Ethereum: Prove that on-chain credit beats traditional finance
Every asUSD represents a vote for decentralized credit over banking intermediaries.
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