I’m joined here today by “Dave K” Freeman, a pseudonymous volunteer contributor to the Epicenter project, in which the “Freeman Family” works to provide an alternative to debt-based currency that is easy enough to use for regular people, not just tech aficionados.
Welcome, Dave K, why did you pick that particular name?
I didn’t pick it. Dave Kleiman was a key early contributor to Bitcoin. The way we work is that we form a coalescent voice based on the synthesis of many independent contributors. I am just wearing the Santa Claus suit today. We believe that it is the content of someone’s speech, rather than who is individually doing the speaking, that matters. This is an important distinction in an era of censorship and identity politics. Epicenter is open to everyone. The Epicenter is wherever you are.
Epicenter USD – EUSD – What is it?
Epicenter USD (EUSD) is a multi-chain pure algorithmic (no fiat) cross-collateralized stablecoin soft-pegged to $1. There is no fiat involved. An EUSD token is redeemable for $1 worth of Epic Cash by burning the token on one platform and receiving coins on the Epic Cash blockchain.
OK, so I have 100 EUSD, and the current price of Epic is around let’s say 50 cents. Does that mean I get 200 EPIC?
Exactly. If the price goes to $1, then you get 100, $2 is 50, and so on. EUSD is just the inverse of the EPIC price, expressed in dollars.
Why can’t we just use Epic Cash directly?
You can, and increasingly, people do. More every day. However, we live in a fiat world. Businesses with expenses in dollar terms need to match their revenues with those expenses to stay solvent. Restaurants are in the food business, not the currency speculation business, after all.
What platforms will have EUSD tokens? Ethereum?
Well, Ethereum is very congested, so there we are going to integrate the L2’s: Namely, Loopring, Polygon, and zkSync to start. Our main focus though is the competitive L1s that are taking a lot of share right now: Binance Smart Chain, Huobi Eco Chain, Vite, and Tron.
Why those? I see from your materials that the idea is to eventually cover all 32 EVM-compatible platforms. What made you choose those first?
Cost-effectiveness, network effects, strong community engagement, and availability of developers to do the work. We want to deliver value to our users immediately, without having to wait for some future version that may be better. When other networks, perhaps Polkadot, Algorand, Cardano, get meaningful usage, we will be there. Until then, as Willie Sutton knew, “that’s where the money is”
So I will be able to trade EUSD where?
Within Ethereum DeFi, because EUSD is composable, we expect it to be integrated into such platforms as 1inch, Aave, Balancer, Bancor, Compound, Curve, Kyber, Sushi and Uniswap on the ETH side. Certainly not overnight of course, but over time it should naturally happen. We are looking at doing some interesting things on the NFT side, smaller markets such as OpenSea and Raribles, with collectible trading cards that are themselves “envelopes” for blocks of EUSD.
BSC, you have Bakery Swap, Pancake Swap, and all the various forks and versions of the Ethereum stuff that people are spinning up over there.
Huobi Eco, MDEX is showing some crazy numbers, and Huobi DeFi Labs is putting some resources behind their versions of things, so we’re excited to see that play out.
Tron is often overlooked, but it is an increasingly key alternative for USDT, especially in Asia. JustSwap, TronTrade, and Poloni Dex are the venues there.
The primary current venue for EPIC itself is a dex called ViteX that runs on the Vite blockchain, so that will be actually technically the first one, post the air grab process expected for March 28.
Anything else near term?
Next up will most likely be Solana, so that we can plug EUSD into Serum and the FTX world.
How can people get in touch and/or learn more?
I would say the best place to start is in the current main telegram group @EpicCash – it is staffed 24/7 in multiple languages by our friendly volunteers. I’m on there @DaveKFreeman. Thanks a lot, I appreciate your taking the time to speak with me today. If you send a message to @FreemanUniversity on telegram, they will send you some free Epic to get started, it is a “get paid to learn” model, pretty cool.
Thanks “Dave K” Freeman*, it has been great.
Epicenter contributors generally cooperate pseudonymously under the moniker “Freeman Family,” to reflect their team spirit and neutrality in the face of a polarized world.