Cardano: the new Djed stablecoin is finally here

cardano stablecoin djed

A very few days ago the new Djed stablecoin was launched on Cardano.

The launch went smoothly, so much so that the market price of this new stablecoin pegged to the value of the US dollar rose to $1.01.

However, this is still such a new project that the token for now has not been listed on any well-known exchange.

At present, besides on DEXs on Cardano, Djed appears to be exchangeable only on Bitrue in USDT. Alternatively, the DEXs on which it is traded are Minswap, SundaeSwap, and WingRiders, where it is paired with ADA, which is Cardano’s native cryptocurrency.

The reserve cryptocurrency, Shen, is also exchangeable on the same exchanges in pairs only with USDT and ADA.

On WingRiders, in addition to exchange pairs in ADA, there is also one in iUSD, which is a “Stable Pool” that allows high amounts to be exchanged with minimal slippage, in case there is sufficient liquidity.

In addition, on WingRiders it is already possible to farm Djed and Shen as well, although the team warns to be very careful because liquidity is still low as pools are still small.

What is Shen?

About 22.1 million Shen tokens have been issued, each worth about 1.1 ADA right now, or just over $0.46.

Therefore in total the value of Djed’s Shen reserve is about $10 million.

As for Djed tokens, 1.8 million have been put into circulation, so for now this algorithmic stablecoin is over-collateralized by more than 5 times.

Moreover, for now the price of Shen is fairly steady, as it debuted at $0.45, and later in the day returned to $0.46 after a very brief hike to $0.73.

The price of ADA went up 6% between yesterday and today, so it makes sense that Shen’s market value also went up. The fact that in a very few hours it has been brought back to the starting level means that for now it seems stable enough not to give problems as a reserve for Djed.

The goal is to hold in reserve a number of Shen tokens whose total value covers 400% to 800% of the market value of all Djed tokens issued, the price of which should always remain firm around $1.

In fact, so far Djed is performing as expected.

Cardano (ADA)

Cardano‘s native cryptocurrency, ADA, remains one of the absolute top 10 by market capitalization, with over $14 billion, which is only $2 billion less than Binance USD (BUSD).

The year 2022 was a tough one for ADA, plummeting from $1.36 to annual lows of $0.24 in December.

Following this -82%, however, it made a decent rebound, which brought its price back to $0.40.

The current price is still 86% below the absolute highs of September 2021, but well above the $0.1 from which the last big bull run began.

Notably, the current price of ADA is close to the maximum price made in January 2021, which is when the bull run had already started but the great 2021 speculative bubble had not yet formed. It is also in line with that of October 2022, i.e., before the crash due to the FTX bankruptcy, so the idea that the bottom is now behind us also applies to Cardano.

Cardano’s boost to DeFi thanks to the new stablecoin Djed

One of the uses of the new Djed algorithmic stablecoin is within the DeFi protocols on Cardano.

In fact, Cardano has lagged somewhat behind among decentralized networks in terms of its use of decentralized finance protocols.

Right now it ranks only 26th, surpassed even by smaller blockchains such as Moonbeam and Thorchain.

However, during these first weeks of 2023 the TVL on Cardano has grown from $50 million to $97 million, almost doubling. It is worth noting that Thorchain has a TVL of 140 million, and for instance Kava of 203 million, which is more than double Cardano’s TVL.

Comparisons with the other top 10 are merciless: apart from Ethereum, which is the undisputed leader in DeFi, BSC has a TVL of 5 billion (5,000 million), and Solana 270 million. The main Layer 2s on Ethereum also stand out, such as Arbitrum with 1.3 billion, Polygon with 1.2 and Optimism with 740 million, as well as Avalanche with 960 million.

It remains to be seen whether the introduction of a native algorithmic stablecoin on Cardano will give a boost to the DeFi ecosystem on this blockchain that has been struggling to take off for some time now.