Blog

Introducing Stable Coin (SBC)

7 min read
Ben Milne | Brale
Jared Dellitt | Brale
Rocky Warren | Brale
Michael McAllister | Brale
Kenny Miesner | Brale
Chase Merlin | Brale
Arun Sondhi | Brale
Andrea Roy | Brale
Keenan Randolph | Brale
Ramin Wright | Brale
Brale Stable Coin (SBC) | Brale Blog

SBC stands for Stable Coin and it's designed to be incredibly simple in that stability is its purpose. When it comes to money for everyday use, stability is good.

Stable Coin is intentionally designed to be high quality. No algos or tricks, just classic accounting that enables money to move onto blockchains and into DeFi. SBC represents what many describe as a digital dollar, without making any attempt to be the only digital dollar. We see it as the beginning of what is possible following in the footsteps of some incredible innovations and its purpose is to be a tool for learning.

SBC is a fiat-backed stablecoin developed by Brale using best-in-class practices.

SBC White Paper

Download the Stable Coin (SBC) whitepaper from IPFS

Download

We're looking for feedback on our approach

Every part of the SBC design has been thought about carefully, but that doesn't mean it's perfect. Today we're sharing our design decisions thus far and looking for feedback on how to improve it. We ask for an open mind and open communication.

Part of Brale's approach has been to ensure that we're building these ideas inside of today's regulatory frameworks to enable the ideas of tomorrow. Brale is a registered MSB and a licensed money transmitter in the US. We've spent much of the last year discussing these ideas and the approach with partners, regulators, and market participants.

Challenges we set out to solve

We think options in the market (USDC, USDP) are exceptional, but different design choices make it hard for regulated institutions to participate. We're trying to reduce barriers to participation with every product we develop and SBC is no different.

Most institutional capital is not leveraging DeFi protocols today due to concerns with either the technology, issuance model, or treasury management of existing solutions. Meanwhile, leading Fintech companies have demonstrated redeemability at scale without introducing unnecessary risk in treasury management practices.

We believe there is an opportunity to build stablecoins in a unique way to onboard the majority of capital and regulated institutions into DeFi. Stablecoins that follow established CeFi practices and offer choices to DeFi users can add value to both ecosystems.

Built on Base with Treasury Optimizations in Mind

SBC is minted with Base using our own Treasury designed and built in partnership with US regulated institution partners. The treasury that sits behind SBC consists of a very simple structure that's optimized for redemption, as opposed to yield.

SBC is backed by the most straightforward holding infrastructure one can dream up. Assets backing SBC are held in a segregated account in cash, cash equivalents, and treasury securities. Managing treasury balances over time depends on when redemptions occur, which is something we'll continue to learn as the product grows.

SBC Treasury Structure

Diagram showing Brale's treasury breakdown of cash, cash equivalents, and US
Treasuries that back our
stablecoins

This structure is a feature of SBC, and the simplicity to mint or burn SBC redeeming back into USD is an important part of how to create safety for anyone who might use it.

Holdings are reviewed against the stablecoins issued on a daily basis, demonstrating what we believe is a best practice in reporting. One open question we have for market participants: how would you like to see Proof of Reserves work?

We have had the benefit of building the back-end systems from scratch rather than repurposing something old; this helps us achieve the quality of reserve tracking we aspire to. With all this great new technology, we are eager to find the right way to report an attestation. We hope this entry solicits some feedback.

Multi-chain compatible

We believe the future is multi-chain and have used Base to make SBC available on multiple chains from day zero. SBC's origins are on public chains, but it's also compatible with private chains. We'll share more details about that in a future post.

The smart contracts and minted supply of just over $6M live on Ethereum, Avalanche, and Polygon, with more chains coming soon.

Total Supply
$6,457,131
Contracts

SBC uses another best practice, at least from our perspective - a unit of value can only be represented once on any chain. So when SBC is swapped across a chain, it is removed from circulation on the chain it is coming from and transitioned to the new chain it is moving to. This ensures that the amount in circulation always matches the underlying treasury backing SBC.

Single issuer today, multi issuer tomorrow?

Our perception is that the single issuer model of many stables makes it difficult for some organizations to participate. We're the sole issuer of SBC today, but we've designed the technology to support multiple issuers and we're eager to bring more on.

As far as opportunities go we think there is enough opportunity to go around across a $100T+ global landscape.

Additional organizations with appropriate regulatory approval will carry the same benefits and the same obligations as Brale. Reach out to us about issuing SBC by signing up and requesting a demo.

Help us improve SBC

SBC has been added to the dashboard on our website so you can see where it's been issued and how you can interact with it. With this addition, we hope to bring transparency to how we're thinking about chain-swaps, data access, and reserves, as final decisions are made. When logged in, SBC can be minted, burned, swapped, and transferred like any other stable we support. You can see where SBC has already been deployed today.

Avalanche
$1.22M
18.90%

*Total across $6,457,131 as of February 2023

As you can see on the public chains, usage is very minimal and we've announced no listing partners, yet. We're testing and far enough along we'd like your feedback on how to continue to improve SBC before it's made officially available for purchase in the jurisdictions where we are authorized to sell.

If you're interested in creating your own SBC, listing SBC, or leveraging it for our own use case, we'd love your feedback.

Does the world need another stablecoin?

Common wisdom suggests that more high quality stablecoins are needed in the ecosystem. Our view is that the future has many stablecoins which may eventually become application specific.

Generally, global currency stability is something most people and businesses appreciate. The continued future and adoption of digital dollars (or whatever you call them) are tied to stability for most of the world. Our intent is to eliminate (or lessen) the barriers in order to bring high quality digital assets to market.

Stable Coin (SBC) is an idea to test this theory. It's in closed alpha and we're moving to beta in states where we are authorized to sell SBC soon. For now, we'd just love to hear how you'd make a digital dollar stablecoin better, more usable, and more adoptable.

Reducing barriers to participation

Brale doesn't charge any fees to use SBC. For qualifying entities, it can be minted and redeemed right inside our portal at no cost. To apply to use SBC, please log into the portal and request a demo.

We'd love your feedback. How can we make SBC even better?

Try SBC for yourself

Sign up to test minting, burning, and swapping SBC.

Sign up

Contributors

  • Ben Milne | Brale
    Ben Milne
    CEO
  • Jared Dellitt | Brale
    Jared Dellitt
    CTO
  • Rocky Warren | Brale
    Rocky Warren
    Principal Engineer
  • Michael McAllister | Brale
    Michael McAllister
    Sr Software Engineer
  • Kenny Miesner | Brale
    Kenny Miesner
    Sr Designer
  • Chase Merlin | Brale
    Chase Merlin
    Sr Product Manager
  • Arun Sondhi | Brale
    Arun Sondhi
    Sr Software Engineer
  • Andrea Roy | Brale
    Andrea Roy
    Software Engineer
  • Keenan Randolph | Brale
    Keenan Randolph
    Operations Analyst
  • Ramin Wright | Brale
    Ramin Wright
    Head of Operations