Rob 🐘

“Circle and Tether have already won the stablecoin battle” There is a small team building on @aoTheComputer I think are seriously flying under the radar right now. — @AstroUSD is an overcollateralized stablecoin backed by other stablecoins, starting with USDC, USDT, and DAI. At first glance, they position as a unified liquidity layer for stables on AO. But what’s important to understand is their strategy. In one sentence: They are starting by maximizing the Stablecoin Developer Experience and building up. What does that mean? Part of the key insight to Astro is understanding all of the deposits they enable are yield-bearing or capable of generating yield. This earns Astro a revenue stream directly proportional to their TVL. Enter Stablecoin Developer Experience: What I find most interesting is what they do with the yield; Astro redistributes it to applications directly in proportion to their usage of the Astro Protocol. This means builders and teams have a new incentive to build on Astro over other stablecoins and the opportunity to earn a new revenue stream from capital that was already going to flow in. You don’t earn by accepting payments in USDC, and certainly not Tether. You can now with Astro. — The other big reason Astro are small but mighty is because of their team. @kadar1 has been studying stablecoins for years on both the finance and legal fronts. He and his team also have institutional experience previously working at Copper, so they understand the importance of security and compliance, and they already understand what retail and institutions want. They are also FAST. They ship fast. They iterate fast. They partner fast. — Not excited about AO? Doesn’t matter. You don’t need conviction in it. Astro is building rails, powered by AO, that can service other ecosystems. Their market isn’t just hinged on AO, but their success brings AO liquidity. Starting with application adoption. — If you are excited about AO, Astro has already won. Their first product launch was the first wrapped form of AR on AO backed by an institutional custodian. QAR enabled Astro to meet every team building in the ecosystem, establish a relationship, integrate, and scale. It was the first test of the rails they’ve been working on, and now QAR is ubiquitous across just about every product in AO and has millions in TVL. — There is a lack of imagination in payments with crypto right now. Ramping is hard, trading is hard, compliance is hard. I’m excited to see what @AstroUSD have in store for these problems above developer experience, but more importantly, I’ll be exited to see when the world realizes what this team is up to. What do you think of Astro? — Disclaimer: @communitylabs has a financial position in Astro. This is not investment advice.