cUSD
A Canton-native dollar · 2026
Decentralized stablecoin — on Canton

Stable like
gravity.

A dollar, backed not by trust or governance, but by the arithmetic of the collateral itself.

equilibrium
100%
collateral ratio at entry
≥ 100%
at every other price
0
liquidations ever required
0
governance parameters
—— Structural solvency. No peg defense.
Read the mechanism →
The assets

cUSD is backed by a pool of two Canton-native tokens whose USD prices move inversely to each other.

CCCanton Coin
The native token of Canton.
Issued to super-validators for securing the network and used for transaction fees. Its USD price p fluctuates with market demand — a normal volatile crypto asset.
USD value p
iCCInverse Canton Coin
CC's mirror, priced at 1/p.
Minted by permanently destroying CC, at a cost of 1/p² CC per iCC. Non-redeemable for CC. Its only utility is paying Canton network fees — gas burn keeps its price anchored to 1/p.
USD value 1 / p

Holding equal units of each produces USD portfolio value p + 1/p — a perpetual straddle with minimum $2 at peg, convex upward in either direction. cUSD borrows the same convexity for its reserve.

The law

One equation governs the collateral. It is the reason cUSD cannot lose its floor.

Reserve USD value at CC price p
V(p)  =  (D⁄2) · (p⁄p0 + p0⁄p)

For a deposit of D dollars of symmetric pair at oracle price p0, reserve value touches its minimum D exactly at p = p0, and strictly exceeds it everywhere else.

minimum = D   ·   convex   ·   always ≥ 100% collateralized

Values

Given $10 of symmetric pair deposited at peg (5 CC + 5 iCC), backing $10 of cUSD:

CC price
Reserve value
Collateral ratio
Status
$0.10
$50.50
505%
over-collateralized
$0.25
$22.50
225%
over-collateralized
$0.50
$12.50
125%
over-collateralized
$1.00
$10.00
100%
at peg · minimum
$2.00
$12.50
125%
over-collateralized
$4.00
$22.50
225%
over-collateralized
$10.00
$50.50
505%
over-collateralized
Immunity

cUSD is structurally immune to the failure modes that have broken every decentralized stablecoin before it.

Collateral crash
DAI, March 2020. Ethereum dropped 50% faster than liquidators could act; auctions filled at zero-bid; $5M of unbacked DAI remained in circulation until an MKR dilution.
vault grows more solvent
Reflexive spiral
UST/LUNA, May 2022. Peg failure triggered reflexive LUNA mint; minting diluted faster than the burn could restore equilibrium. $40B evaporated.
no reflexive mint exists
Bank run
Every undercollateralized design: first redeemers extract good value, later ones find the pool dry. The race to exit is the whole dynamic.
$1 per cUSD · no race
Issuer insolvency
USDC, March 2023. Circle held reserves at Silicon Valley Bank; depegged to $0.87 within hours of bank failure.
no issuer
Reserve opacity
USDT's perennial question: does the reserve match the supply? Audits lag; the answer is never final.
collateral on-chain, provable
Governance capture
Any system with a parameter lever can have that lever pulled by the wrong hands — whether via vote manipulation, bribery, or legal coercion.
no parameters to govern
Mechanism

Deposit is symmetric. The reserve is straddle-shaped.

  1. User brings $D of symmetric pair — D⁄(2p0) CC plus D·p0⁄2 iCC at the current oracle price.
  2. The contract accepts the pair into its aggregate reserve. No burning, no minting.
  3. D cUSD is issued to the depositor.
  4. The reserve's USD value satisfies V(p) ≥ D at every future CC price, with equality only at p0.
  5. Redemption takes a 1/V slice of the aggregate pool — returning exactly $1 of value at the current price. Never more.
// user brings symmetric pair at current price p₀
cc_in = D / (2·p₀)
icc_in = D · p₀ / 2
cusd_out = D
// pool state at price p
V = A·p + B/p
// guarantee: always over-collateralized
V ≥ D  ∀ p > 0
// redemption: 1/V slice of the pool
burn 1 cUSD → A/V CC + B/V iCC
// value = $1 exactly
Redemption

A dollar, returned.

Burn 1 cUSD against the contract. Receive exactly $1 of symmetric iCC and CC at the current oracle price. Never more. The convexity of the reserve belongs to the contract.

Per 1 cUSD redeemed
A⁄V  CC  +  B⁄V  iCC
A, B = pool's CC and iCC · V = A·p + B/p · value = exactly $1
Always executable A 1/V slice is defined for any non-empty pool. Redemption never fails for composition reasons.
Exactly $1 — always No premium, no race, no surprise. Every cUSD returns the same dollar, at any CC price.
Coverage rises with each redemption Pool value falls by $1, but cUSD supply falls by 1 too. When V > D, remaining holders are better collateralized after every burn.

The most stable stablecoin under every historical failure mode — with a single novel failure mode correlated with Canton's own liveness.

You cannot do better than this without trusting something outside the chain.

CIP-iCC ↗ Built on Canton Technical paper ↗