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QIAN Stablecoin system, powered by The Force Protocol

I. Introduction

Everyone can create money as long as there is credit.

QIAN aims to build a global, stable, low-threshold and decentralized stablecoin ecosystem that everyone can participate in.

1. Background

With the popularity of blockchain technology and cryptocurrency, a new form of currency has emerged. However, due to the fluctuation of the price of cryptocurrency, it cannot be used as a trading medium, cannot be deferred, and cannot be used as the unit of accounting.

Based on the demand for stability, there has been stablecoin represented by Tether, in which market volume has reached billions of dollars. Incomplete statistics show that there are more than 60 stablecoin projects in the market (June 2019).

Seeing the huge opportunities in the market, global financial and Internet giants have also entered this market. On February 14, 2019, JP Morgan announced the launch of JPM Coin; on June 18, 2019, Facebook released cryptocurrency project Libra's white paper, joining dozens of well-known financial institutions and internet multinationals, plans to launch a cryptocurrency-based payment system.

A currency revolution sweeping the globe is taking place.

2. Problems

However, the mainstream stablecoin projects are still operated in a centralized or multi-centered manner, we still have to trust those institutions, while worrying about opaque and over-issued issues. The casting of stablecoin is still the privilege of big capital, and monopoly is still the way to chase maximum interests.

We believe that there must be another way, whether it is an international business giant or a mortal being, as long as it can prove its credit, it can participate in the generation of money equally, freely and conveniently, enjoy undifferentiated and non-discriminatory financial services in an open, inclusive and transparent ecosystem. It reflects the essence and spirit of the blockchain.

In order to achieve such a vision, relying on the open-source framework of The Force Protocol, we officially launched the stablecoin project - "QIAN".

II. Introduction of QIAN

Let's start with a brief introduction to the QIAN, and the next chapters will cover specific implementation details.

1. Creation basis of QIAN

Since ancient times, there have been shells, beads, sticks, metal money, banknotes, etc. as currency. Everyone uses a certain currency because it has a consensus on certain groups of people or all human beings. The essence of money is value credit, so we believe that everyone can create money as long as there is a proper value credit tool.

In the blockchain world, token is a direct manifestation of credit. Therefore, the cryptocurrency or crypto-assets with better liquidity can be used as guarantee for the issuance of decentralized stablecoin. Through a certain price stabilization mechanism, the exchange rate stability to fiat currency can be achieved.

2. Basic points of QIAN

QIAN uses crypto-assets as the underlying support assets;
QIAN will initially maintain a 1:1 exchange rate with the US dollar, and will issue a 1:1 exchange rate with the international mainstream currencies such as the Euro, Japanese Yen, RMB, and Libra with the corresponding symbol in the future;
The QIAN system is prioritized developing on Bitcoin RSK sidechain and Ethereum, and will be upgraded based on the mainstream cross-chain architecture;
The QIAN system is committed to the ultimate decentralized operation, but this will be a gradual process;
The QIAN system is based on the open-source framework of The Force Protocol and is part of The Force Protocol ecosystem.

3. Stability mechanism

At least 100% cryptoasset support;
Stablecoin holders can redeem collateral with market price at any time;
Carefully select the underlying cryptoassets portfolio to reduce systemic risk;
Dynamic interest adjustment mechanism to maintain and adjust QIAN's development and stability.
Emergency Risk Fund.

4. Two tokens in the QIAN system

QIAN: Same meaning as “money” in mandarin Chinese, also in I Ching (the Book of Changes), “the QIAN Diagram” stands for the sky and represents the law of the operation of all things in the universe. It is the highest positive spirit and energy. Following the two important meaning, we named the first stablecoin in Bitcoin ecosystem as QIAN. QIAN is a stablecoin created by The Force Protocol project development team, cycling on Bitcoin RSK sidechain and Ethereum, which can be generated or destroyed, can be used for lending, investment, payment, value storing and other application scenarios.

FOR: The Force Protocol Eco-Token, also governance token of the QIAN system for voting on QIAN ecology governance and maintaining QIAN price stability.

III. Pledge management

1. Excess cryptoasset support

QIAN is generated by the user pledging cryptoasset to the smart contract, at the initial stage, the system will require pledge rate (the pledge value / generated QIAN value) to be no less than 120%. The initial underlying assets will be dominated by cryptocurrencies such as BTC and ETH. After a certain period of stable operation, the system will consider incorporating cryptoassets such as offline asset tokens with strong consensus as collateral. Considering the high volatility and high correlation of these token assets, excess assets will be required to be pledged.

For each type of cryptoasset, the core parameters of the system configuration include:

Minimum pledge rate: Below this pledge rate will trigger the system mandatory clearing process;
Maximum coinage: refers to the maximum amount of QIAN that can be generated in the system for specific cryptoassets;
Liquidation fines: The proportion of pledges that are punishable by the system when the specific pledge rate is lower than the minimum pledge rate. Generally speaking, the higher the volatility of the cryptoassets, the higher the liquidation penalty.

2. Cryptoassets portfolio management

In order to avoid QIAN price fluctuations, diversify risks and improve stability, the QIAN system will select pledges from mainstream cryptocurrency and tokenized assets, including but not limited to: asset type, market value, liquidity, volatility, issuer, issue area, etc. Since QIAN is a decentralized system, everyone is free to participate in casting QIAN. Therefore, the QIAN system's cryptoassets portfolio management has a flexible portfolio management strategy, the system does not deliberately maintain the ratio of each cryptoasset in the system. However, as mentioned earlier, the system will set the maximum coinage for different cryptoassets, the low volatility cryptoassets will have higher maximum coinage.

IV. Administration of stability

1. Dynamic interest adjustment mechanism

In order to maintain the development and stability of the QIAN ecosystem, the pledge of cryptoassets to cast QIAN will likely generate interest. Interest is a mechanism for adjusting the supply of stablecoins. Interest could be paid in two ways. This decision will be determined by an automatic algorithm. When the system determines that it needs to improve the system's risk tolerance, the payment direction of interest is paid by the QIAN creators to the system, the interest can be paid in FOR or QIAN, the interest will be converted into FOR, and locked in smart contract; When the QIAN system needs to encourage the mints to increase QIAN liquidity, the interest payment direction will be paid to the QIAN creators by the system, and the interest is paid by the unlocked FOR from smart contract.

2. Cryptoasset redeemable mechanism

The system will support QIAN holders to redeem equivalent cryptoassets at their market prices with 1 QIAN = 1 USD, which is the primary mechanism for securing QIAN prices. Any deviation from the stable exchange rate will cause the price to return due to the existence of arbitrage participants.

The redemption mechanism becomes complicated when the QIAN system supports multiple cryptoassets. In theory, QIAN holders can redeem any pledge in the system. However, in order to maintain the relative stability of the system's cryptoassets portfolio, certain restrictions need to be added on the basis of satisfying users to redeem any pledged assets at any time. Our solution is that when users redeem cryptoasset, the system dynamically displays the redeemable amount supported by each cryptoasset in real time, users redeem the cryptoasset according to the restriction will not significantly change the distribution of the cryptoassets in the entire system.

The redeemable amount of each cryptoasset is always in dynamic change. In the QIAN system, the adjustment mechanism for the redeemable amount of each cryptoasset goes through two stages.

At the beginning of the multi-asset collateral system, we will introduce a systemic parameter - redemption adjustment factor α (determined by community vote, for instance, α can be 5%), we assume the original portion of pledge assets i 's value in the system (converted to QIAN) is Wi, and the real proportion after redemption is wi, then the redeemable amount needs to be met: for any asset i in the system,

Code:

Wi (1-α) ≤ wi ≤ Wi (1+α)

Wi will be updated every time a pledged asset is added, quit or cleared, but Wi will not be updated when redeemed.

By introducing the adjustment factor, it can be ensured that the proportion of various underlying assets is in a healthy change interval. However, when a certain underlying asset reaches the maximum redemption amount, the user who needs to be redeemed can only wait for other users to pledge the asset to the system. This type of asset will undoubtedly affect the liquidity of the system and will not solve the problem fundamentally. Therefore, this strategy can only be adopted at the beginning of the system and when the overall business scale is still small.

In the second phase, we will adopt a dynamic interest rate adjustment mechanism for the redemption and pledge operations of each underlying asset. First, the redemption limit for each type of asset will remain. In order for the underlying asset to maintain a healthy pledge rate, when the redeemable amount of any asset i in the system is close to Wi (1-α), the system will pay interest in FOR to the operation of casting QIAN with asset i pledge to stimulate more behavior on casting QIAN and maintain asset i's pledge amount.

The crypto asset redemption mechanism may bring problem, due to the randomness of assets type redeemed by the QIAN holder, in the extreme case, the remaining assets of the system may not enough to repay the mint of the original pledge cryptoasset. Under such circumstances, the system unlocks FOR token and replenishes the difference by auction. In addition, the system will charge a certain fee for redemption.

V. External system

1. Oracle mechanism

The system needs to obtain external prices in real time to monitor changes in pledge rates for timely liquidation and risk control. Oracle provides timely external price information for the system, including the stablecoin QIAN, the governance token FOR and the pledged token. In the absence of a mature decentralized oracle solution, the system maintains a whitelist of price feeding addresses which are added or deleted by community governance voting. Each price feeding includes price information and expiration time, the system calculates the median of all valid price feedings as the final price. After the industry-recognized oracle plan is invented, the system will switch to the corresponding decentralized oracle to ensure a fair, open and transparent price feeding mechanism.

2. Trading platform

When the user's pledge rate is lower than the minimum requirement, the pledge assets will be liquidated. However, when the price of the pledged assets falls rapidly, the system may not be liquidated in time; in addition, the system will charge or pay interest, collect asset withdrawal fees, clearing fees, and so on. Therefore, the system may have a surplus or loss. It is necessary to introduce an external trading platform to realize the bidding transaction between QIAN, FOR and the pledged assets.

VI. Platform Governance

The platform will eventually be completely handed over to community governance. The main players in the platform include the QIAN creator, the QIAN holder and the holder of the governance token FOR. The purpose of platform governance is to balance the interests of all participants and maintain a stable and sustainable development of the system on the basis of certain trade-offs.

The main risk that the QIAN creator takes in the system is the liquidation risk caused by the price falling of the pledged assets. The benefits which QIAN creator enjoys include obtaining liquidity or gaining leverage. Based on research on similar projects in the industry, we believe that QIAN's casting should be encouraged within a reasonable risk range, which is beneficial to the development of the QIAN system, so we have designed an adjustable interest mechanism.

The core claim of QIAN holders is their exchange rate stability, so we designed the function to redeem equivalent pledge asset at any time.

The FOR holder will be responsible of the final benefit or risk of the entire system. The management of QIAN system is determined by the vote of FOR holder. The voted proposal can modify the internal management variables of the QIAN platform, which including but not limited to:

Add new pledged asset
Choose a trusted oracle
Adjust interest
Adjust the withdrawal fee
Risk parameters: debt ceiling, liquidation ratio, stabilization fee, penalty ratio

VII. System architecture

QIAN system architecture diagram

External system
User Wallet: User's Blockchain Wallet.
Oracle: Provides market price of pledge, stablecoin and governance token.
Trading platform: Provides exchanges or auctions of pledges, stablecoin and governance token.

Internal system
Pledge Manager: Provides functions such as pledge locking, unlocking, and parameter configuration, etc.
Stabilized Coin Manager: Provides stablecoin generation, destruction and other functions.
Repayment processor: Provides function of repayment, settlement of debt, etc.
Pledge rate monitor: Calculate the pledge rate at regular intervals, trigger the replenishment reminder, force liquidation, etc.
Liquidator: Calculate the debt situation, the amount of pledges required, etc.
Pledge processor: Responsible for raising pledges and performing redemption, calling reimbursement, etc.
Governance Token Manager: Provides functions such as lock and unlock of governance token.
Governance Voter: Initiate or participate in community governance voting and modify system parameters based on voting results.
Stablecoin Redemption Manager: Responsible for converting the stablecoins into the equivalent of pledges with 1 QIAN = 1 USD.

VIII. Future project plan

In the early days, QIAN will firstly develop on RSK and Ethereum. In the follow-up, we will migrate the QIAN system to the Force Protocol financial application public blockchain to build a stable currency system that truly supports the pledge of multiple cryptoassets. The Force Protocol financial application public blockchain may partly develop based on Tendermint Core and COSMOS SDK, and has a distributed financial application consensus mechanism originally developed by The Force Protocol team to support asset cross-chain circulation and large-scale distributed financial applications.

The QIAN system code will also maintain a fully open-source strategy and will gradually integrate into the financial open platform of The Force Protocol, becoming part of The Force Protocol financial application development architecture, providing technical service to teams around the world which wish to create a decentralized stablecoin system, eventually create a global open cryptocurrency market.

IX. Repositories structure

Please check our repositories structure on Github, https://github.com/theforceprotocolgroup/stablecoin#ii-introduction-of-qian

For more information about QIAN stablecoin, welcome to check our Github page: https://github.com/theforceprotocolgroup/stablecoin

The future is here, QIAN, the stablecoin for BTC holders, thank you all very much!