The objective of this post is to describe 1) why blockchain networks should have a stable native currency, 2) why being a native currency is good for a stable currency, and 3) different categories of stable currencies. …

Recently, Vitalik asked an interesting question: can a stablecoin “safely” wind down to zero users? He makes the following useful point: In principle, if demand decreases extremely slowly, the volcoin’s expected future fees and hence its market cap could still be large relative to the stablecoin, and so the system…

The context: we want to create an internal AMM because keeping an order book requires too much computation and storage. Let’s assume we are working with a simple, constant product AMM (google it, or read this if you aren’t familiar with them). The problem: an AMM has a slope representing…

You have probably heard that Bitcoin is the new gold. But we can do better than that. I say Bitcoin is the new Bull. Crypto is the new cattle. Why cattle? Because cattle were the primary form of wealth for people who practiced nomadic pastoralism. A large part of human…

In the aftermath of the Terra collapse, those of us interested in stablecoins should start to take stock of what was learned. One of the lessons you will hear is that a stablecoin should be backed by external collateral. Before we assess this advice, let’s start with some preliminary definitions: …

The Icewater team is about to launch our first mainnet token, v1. Given the ironically volatile history of stablecoins, we will not be engaging in any large-scale sale or distribution of tokens. …

You may have heard the phrase “death spiral” with respect to algorithmic stablecoins. Here I will attempt to describe what this means, and how to avoid it. Defining Death Spiral The death spiral we are talking about here is specific to a particular type of stablecoin, namely, algorithmic stablecoins based on the “seigniorage…

A DAO (for Decentralized Autonomous Organization)is a new form of business organization that is native to the blockchain. What is it? well, the Ethereum foundation has this handy chart: Corporations But to really understand the nature of a DAO, we need to better understand the “traditional organization”, the corporation. The corporation…

The waters may seem calm, but we’re about to make waves. 2022 is going to be a big year for the Icewater protocol, so it’s a good time to stop and take a look at where we have been, where we we are, and where we are going. …