Agora, an institutional-grade U.S. dollar stablecoin issuer, and Mantle, a hub for financial and consumer on-chain applications, announced the deployment of AUSD, a next-generation stablecoin fully backed by cash, U.S. Treasury bills and overnight repo agreements, on Mantle Network, a modular Ethereum layer-2 (L2) blockchain. AUSD is to tap into the tremendous initial on-chain liquidity support from Mantle.
Native Fiatcoin’s Enable Explosion of Real-World Applications
Agora’s native deployment brings with it the ability for traditional financial services and payment companies to operate their business on Mantle with a native stablecoin partner. It is a monumental development that offers unprecedented opportunities: Bridged stablecoins have a host of limitations including time locks, security risks, and capital inefficiency. Having an institutional-grade, native stablecoin will accelerate the adoption of Mantle by traditional businesses.
Payment companies and exchanges will now be able to natively operate applications on the Mantle stack. Some things to expect native AUSD on Mantle to power in the future include: white-labeled stablecoins for exchanges and applications, cross-border payment companies, in-game token economies, and more.
AUSD Is Ready on Mantle With Ecosystem-Wide Composability
AUSD is now supported on Mantle decentralized exchanges (DEXs) such as Merchant Moe, with liquidity pairs against Mantle native assets mETH, cmETH, FBTC, and other stablecoins.
“We’re thrilled to be working with the Mantle team and to be joining this vibrant ecosystem. Mantle has an exceptional suite of financial and consumer applications, with many impactful announcements on the way. This is a forward-leaning team and Mantle was the priority for AUSD’s first L2 deployment,” said Nick van Eck, CEO of Agora.
“AUSD incorporates both the best practices of and biggest lessons from older generation stablecoins, and offers a solution that addresses some of the most pernicious issues faced by stablecoins in wider adoption,” said Jordi Alexander, Chief Alchemist of Mantle. “Kudos to Agora in staying true to its Ancient Greek namesake in providing a marketplace for the free exchange of value and ideas. And we are delighted to support AUSD as a preferred digital dollar asset on Mantle.”
The Dawn of the Stablecoin 3.0 Era
AUSD kick-starts the Stablecoin 3.0 Era and offers an open stablecoin model focused on builders and businesses. Its design addresses 1.0 Era (2014-) stablecoin USDT’s opacity around reserves, banking relationships and audits, and differentiates from 2.0 Era (2018-) stablecoin USDC’s exchange-backed setup with Coinbase that has led to a growing conflict of interest as the number and breadth of market participants expand. Having had the hindsight of the on-chain activity explosion of DeFi, consumer, institutional-grade custodians/prime brokers, wallets, and PayFi, AUSD is built to avoid the conflict of interest inherent to the design of USDC, where it may be benefiting economically from third-party blockchains such as Solana, or custodians such as Fireblocks and Anchorage, while favoring their respective competitors Base on the blockchain side and Coinbase on the custody side.
Agora, instead, pays businesses for providing services to AUSD, whether they are exchanges, FinTech companies, payment providers, or apps. AUSD is conceived as a kind of money that is neutral and has no conflicts of interest. Businesses that drive utility and liquidity to money are integral in the economics of AUSD’s network. Agora uses a G-SIB grade custodian for its Reserve Fund and institutional asset management of reserves.
Starting today, lending protocols, perps exchanges, and cross-border payment companies on Mantle can all benefit from adopting AUSD, and see an improvement in their economics over prior models. The revenue generated from AUSD can help expand marketing budgets as well as reduce fees and increase yield rewards for users, or be spent on security and product development, or buying and burning governance token.
The economics of AUSD give power to builders and businesses, and allow for the benefits to be in turn passed on to everyday users. With deep liquidity and high composability from day one, AUSD is expected to achieve economy scale on Mantle through wide adoption.
About Agora
Agora manages AUSD, a digital dollar minted 1:1 with USD fiat. AUSD is designed to be a secure digital currency, utilizing one of the world’s largest custodian banks to safeguard assets. AUSD enables users to participate in trading, lending and payments. It is the most cost-efficient stablecoin to transact with on EVM due to its gas-optimized smart contract, making it ideal for traders and payments.
Additionally, Agora offers a forward-thinking payment and operations platform for businesses.
About Mantle
Mantle is building the largest sustainable hub for financial and consumer on-chain applications. Conceived by a community of builders as a burgeoning on-chain ecosystem pioneering a vision for the mass adoption of token-governed technologies, Mantle Ecosystem comprises an Ethereum layer 2 (L2) — Mantle Network, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) — Mantle Governance, one of the largest on-chain treasuries — Mantle Treasury, and an Ether (ETH) liquid staking and restaking protocol — mETH Protocol: all built on Ethereum.
Mantle’s first core product is Mantle Network, an Ethereum L2. Mantle Network’s modular architecture separates transaction execution, data availability, and transaction finality into modules — which can be individually upgraded and adopt the latest innovations. Mantle Network is the first L2 to partner with ETH restaking protocol EigenLayer for the data availability module. By adopting a rollup architecture, Mantle Network is secured by Ethereum. $MNT powers Mantle Network as its native gas token and ecosystem growth token, and serves as the governance token of Mantle Governance.
Mantle’s second core product is mETH Protocol, a vertically integrated Ether (ETH) liquid staking and restaking platform. mETH Protocol began as a permissionless and non-custodial ETH liquid staking protocol deployed on Ethereum L1 and governed by Mantle. mETH Protocol combines simple and modern design with robust risk management, and leverages extensive existing Mantle Ecosystem resources to deliver a highly rewarding experience and supercharges Mantle’s status as a yield powerhouse. Mantle Staked Ether ($mETH) serves as the value-accumulating receipt token of mETH Protocol. The arrival of $cmETH expands mETH Protocol into liquid restaking, and it serves as the liquid restaking token (LRT) of mETH Protocol. $COOK is the upcoming governance token of mETH Protocol.
To support the next-generation of innovators, builders, and developers, Mantle is growing its ecosystem via Mantle EcoFund, a catalyzed capital pool of $200M. Mantle’s Showcase Apps program lends additional support and publicity to ecosystem projects in categories such as real world assets (RWA), web3 gaming and intent-driven applications.
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