Written by: Crush, a core contributor of Biteye
Editor: Crush, core contributor of Biteye
01 Project Introduction
Usual Labs is a startup focused on stablecoin technology. Its founder, Pierre PERSON, is a French politician and member of parliament, and a leader in French crypto asset legislation.
Usual has currently received $7 million in seed round financing, led by IOSG Ventures and Kraken Ventures. Well-known second-layer network projects Starkware (Starknet development company) and Mantle are also on the list of investors.
The core product of the Usual protocol is the stablecoin USD0. Unlike traditional stablecoins (such as USDT and USDC), USD0 is issued with 1:1 support from RWA assets with extremely short maturities and assets such as national bonds, which makes it more secure and stable and reduces the probability of being liquidated at a discount in the event of an asset run.
In Usual's introduction, Tether, the company that issued the stablecoin USDT, was used as an example and comparison many times. They believed that after Tether issued USDT, it did not return the profits of these stablecoins to users.
https://x.com/momir_amidzic/status/1812120424521822369
Tether's nearly $10B in annual revenue is distributed to only a few people, and its company has fewer than 100 employees. Therefore, Tether is often regarded as the most profitable technology company in the world.
What Usual needs to do is to return the ownership of token issuance and the profits generated from it to the users.
In Usual Protocol, users can obtain USD0 by depositing assets, which is equivalent to their deposit certificate (LDT) in the protocol.
Users holding USD0 can choose to lock it to provide liquidity, or issue Liquidity Bond Tokens (LBT), which converts USD0 into USD0++, to participate in the DeFi ecosystem and obtain corresponding benefits. This part of the benefits includes the airdrop of the project's own governance token $USUAL, as well as potential deposit income.
In its project design, Usual cleverly designed the points voucher into a purple pill and mentioned "Break free from the banking matrix", which is hard not to be reminiscent of the science fiction masterpiece "The Matrix" 20 years ago.
The Matrix is a virtual reality system in "The Matrix". After humans lost the war against robots, it controlled and bound humans, making them unable to see the real world.
The concept of "Banking Matrix" proposed by Usual seems to be used to metaphorically describe the current banking system or centralized stablecoin issuing companies, implying that this system, like the virtual reality in "The Matrix", binds people and prevents them from seeing or experiencing the true potential and freedom of decentralized finance.
The purple pills that serve as points also echo the red and blue pills in the movie. In the movie, the protagonist faces a choice:
Red Pill: represents escaping from the virtual reality system and knowing the truth even if reality is painful.
Blue pill: represents the choice to continue living in a virtual illusion of comfort and not to break the status quo.
The purple pill designed by Usual is a mixture of red and blue. It seems to emphasize balanced choices. This may mean that they will break the shackles of the traditional banking system or centralized institutions in a new and revolutionary way, but at the same time, Usual will also provide a safe and reliable stablecoin (USD0) to replace them.
This design contains both the meaning of awakening and change of the "red pill", and the meaning of security and stability provided by the "blue pill", which is quite interesting and novel.
Currently, Usual has announced the official launch of its mainnet on July 10, and simultaneously launched the points activity. Users can obtain points certificates Pills by providing liquidity or holding USD0++, which can be converted into $USUAL token airdrops in the future.
The number of airdrops issued will account for 7.5% of the total supply of Usual. The event will start at 22:30 on July 10, 2024 and last for 4 months. Let’s take a look at the specific steps of Usual interaction.
02 Project Interaction
1. Points activities
https://app.usual.money/#SJYPG
First, open the project website above, or directly enter the invitation code "SJYPG" in the lower left corner.
Follow the official Twitter and connect your wallet as required.
Follow the prompts and continue to the next page. You will see the deposit interface. Users can choose to deposit their assets at this step and convert them to USD0.
The deposit operations here are all on the ETH mainnet. If the current handling fee is high, you can also click "skip" in the upper right corner to skip it temporarily and make the deposit operation later.
The points reward rules are as shown above:
Directly hold USD0++: Users can use USD0 to directly purchase USD0++. Each USD0++ can get 5 pills (one-time), and 3 pills can be obtained every day thereafter;
Providing liquidity: Users can add USD0/USDC or USD0/USD0++ LP in Curve, and every $1 of LP can get 1 or 3 pills per day.
If no operation is needed at the moment, you can skip it.
After everything is completed, users can see their current number of pills and the number of pills they can get every day on the project homepage.
If you did not deposit assets in the previous steps and want to do it later, click "Drugstore" in the left sidebar, and you will see the options of holding USD0++ and adding LP.
At the same time, you can also see a growth multiplier at the top of the page, which means that as the user deposits or provides LP time, the speed of obtaining pills will continue to increase.
It can increase by 2% every day, and can increase up to 10 times at the fastest. Of course, users can withdraw their assets at any time, but once they withdraw, the growth coefficient will be recalculated from 1, that is, the earlier the user deposits, the more pills they will get until the end of the activity.
In addition to depositing money to get pills, users can also participate in attracting new users and inviting friends to join the event. For each friend invited, the inviter can get 10% of the total number of the friend's pills as a reward.
2. Galaxy activity
https://app.galxe.com/quest/usual
In addition to the official website's pill collection event, Usual has also released a new "Pills Campaign" mission in the galaxy.
This part contains some common social tasks, which are relatively simple and users who are interested can also participate.
