Throwing out a firebomb.
Has @LeCryptoMath and the Qedit team building ZSAs thought about shielded stablecoins?
The stablecoin tradeoff in DeFi is well known to this community. Algo stables meet our goal of uncensorable but have always failed. Centralized fiat backed stables, that have been the essential link in crypto asset growth via crypto exchanges, are imminently censorable.
We hate fiat backed stablecoins but we need them and will continue to need them.
Fiat backed stablecoins are the only way most retail users will onboard and store wealth over the next ten years. Gen Z loves crypto and is willing to accept the price variability of BTC, ZEC, etc in their crypto “checking accounts” but they have no wealth.
Over the next ten years, the only way any wealth goes into crypto comes with convincing…boomers and Gen X. That requires some link to fiat, via some kind of fiat stablecoin link for as long as most crypto users and investors mostly live in a fiat economy, which is likely at least a decade ahead.
So, how do we develop an interface between the Zcash blockchain and USDC? That’s what we need to be thinking about more than anything.
Coinbase’s new Base project is, I fully believe, ultimately a payments system play to challenge Visa.
We know that will fail, because everything they are building and have built through partnership with Circle is just another surveillance coin.
Can we utilize the stability of USDC, but avoid its drawbacks, via a series of transactions away from their chain?
USDC already gets put into Maker Vaults with other tokens to create DAI. Then if we create an opportunity for DAI to be shielded in a Zcash note, it becomes hard for Circle to decide to freeze all USDC that goes into Maker vaults much less their inability to police DAI that goes into ZSAs.
Does lengthening the chain of that transformation limit the risk of centralized censorship of the shielded stable while still preserving the tether to fiat that remains essential in the transition to a crypto native economy that will take decades to achieve?
