We are excited to announce TAO, an Internet Computer version of the RAI stablecoin that will support ICP, ETH and BTC as collateral! Users will be able to assume low-interest loans of TAO against these collaterals and many others.

The vast majority of the system backing token, LAO, will be distributed to users of the TAO protocol.

To further understand TAO, it helps to understand its predecessors, RAI and the more well-known DAI.

The State of DAI

MakerDAO's DAI is the most popular "decentralized" stablecoin. However, since DAI's launch the MakerDAO team has made continuous sacrifices of DAI's decentralization in favor of growth. We believe this is short-sighted and the credible neutrality of a stablecoin will provide further long-term sustainability than immediate prioritization of growth.

What backs DAI?

This focus on growth spawned Maker's adoption of risky, centralized collateral: USDC and real-world physical assets. The main reason for adopting USDC was to control DAI's market price by expanding the supply of DAI.

The extent of DAI's reliance on USDC and USDC derivatives can be seen below in one of the most notorious charts in DeFi.

Many in the Maker community believe this dependence on USDC is an existential risk, but are still unable to stop DAI's advances towards centralization.

Enter RAI

Reflexer's RAI was born 2 years ago in response to DAI’s shortcomings and has already demonstrated how a floating peg can offset supply/demand imbalances inherent in over-collateralized stablecoins. The floating peg is fully autonomous, managed by an on-chain PID controller that controls the rate of change of RAI's price.

Basically, the controller makes the rate positive when there is excess RAI supply and negative when there is excess RAI demand. These corrections incentivize the market price to converge to the actual redemption value of RAI.

RAI’s Sovereign Peg

At face-value, the purpose of changing RAI's price through rates is to influence market prices, avoiding extended de-pegging seen in other crypto collateralized stablecoins.

However, since de-pegging is correlated with the price of the underlying collateral, the system's response creates a RAI price that indirectly reflects the USD price of the underlying collateral(s).

Like RAI, TAO will have this sovereign exchange rate, controlled by a similar on-chain controller. Below is RAI's recent USD price(in green) in comparison with other world currencies since the crypto bear market begin in Nov 2021.

To learn more about RAI, visit RAI's price dashboard or read the whitepaper.-

So what is RAI missing?

RAI only accepts ETH as collateral. This is by design, as RAI sought to be an ungoverned system, and managing collaterals requires governance.

However, with the success of the Merge and adoption of Proof of Stake, a considerable amount of ETH will be staked by validators for the foreseeable future. Some people believe the lost opportunity cost of using ETH as collateral in RAI, and not staking it, has contributed to long-term negative rates in RAI.

What if there was a decentralized RAI-like system that accepted multiple collaterals like BTC, ICP (and staked ICP), ETH (and staked ETH)?

Enter TAO

Upon launch, TAO will support ICP, ckETH, ckBTC and other derived collaterals . Users will be able to lock these collaterals in a safe and mint TAO. Other LSDs will be assessed in the future.

TAO will support multiple collaterals like DAI, but will retain the floating price mechanism of RAI.

Because of the floating peg, there is no temptation to onboard centralized stablecoins in order to obey a fixed USD peg, as was done with DAI.

Lower Liquidation Penalties

TAO will use the same general liquidation mechanism as RAI and DAI, increasing discount auctions, but will charge a much lower penalty when a position is liquidated. Based on our analysis, this lower penalty will not tangibly increase risk to the system.

Liquidation Penalties

• RAI: 10%

• DAI: 13%

• TAO: 2-5%, collateral-specific

Token Distribution

We believe the control of a decentralized stablecoin should be distributed as much as possible.

This is why we have chosen a "fair launch" style of token distribution, leveraging the SNS system of the Internet Computer. There will be no pre-sales or VCs involved.

Users of the protocol will be given the majority of the system token, LAO, in order to maximize credible neutrality.

LAO Allocation

• Team: 10%

• Treasury: 10%

• TAO Users: 60%

• SNS: 20%

LAO Rewards

TAO will launch with LAO rewards for users who

1. mint TAO

   and/or

2. provide liquidity in the pools used for the TAO oracle.

Oracles

The system will use custom oracles created using HTTPS outcalls for collaterals upon launch.

The system also needs a TAO/USD oracle used by the rate controller in controlling the floating peg. The TAO/USD oracle will be derived from several DeFi protocols on the Internet Computer.

System Automation

TAO protocol has functions that are called periodically to maintain the system. Examples include

• Collecting interest

• Starting auctions

• Updating oracle prices

These functions will directly pay callers with TAO from the protocol's treasury. So external parties will be intrinsically motivated to keep TAO running efficiently.

Tokenomics

TAO will adopt the buyback-and-burn token model of DAI/RAI, using the governance/system token, LAO.

Surplus from safe interest and liquidations will be auctioned off for LAO at a discount. The LAO collected is automatically burned. RAI has already burned 2.5% of its governing token, FLX through surplus auctions.

Like RAI/DAI, LAO will also be printed and sold in the event of any unbacked debt the system experiences.

For more details, read about MakerDAO's surplus and debt auctions.

Additional Automation

We believe the future of stablecoin governance involves impartial automation.

We are researching further automation of TAO's operations, replacing governance with on-chain mechanisms wherever possible. Further areas we would like to automate in the future:

• Stability fees

• Collateral management

When?

We plan to launch TAO on the Internet Computer in early Q1 of 2024.