# What it would take to leave the lab PegLab, **as this repo**, cannot deploy on Kaspa mainnet as money. The pool is 2 tKAS. The oracle is one key. If you treat tPEG as a dollar it depegs. That is the proof of concept. The name “PegLab” stays the teaching bench. What *can* go to mainnet is a **successor** that copies working objects from other chains — not this toy’s ticker. This file is that map: existing proofs of concept, how they were actually funded, and the full list of what Kaspa still lacks. It is not legal advice and not a raise. Related: [STABLES-GUIDE.md](STABLES-GUIDE.md) (pegs and capital ladder), [VISION.md](VISION.md) (finished conversation on a phone), [KACHAT.md](KACHAT.md) (chat + pay). **TESTNET-10 LAB. NOT USD. DO NOT RAISE MONEY AGAINST tPEG.** --- ## 1. Call this lab what it is | Name | Honest sentence | Mainnet? | | --- | --- | --- | | **PegLab (this checkout)** | A Testnet-10 depeg demo. Tiny pool, admin price, will fail as $1. | **No.** Keep it as the public lesson. | | **Successor A — KAS receipt** | One unit is one sompi locked in a covenant. Not a dollar. | Yes, after audit-lite + indexer + wallet verify. Default. | | **Successor B — hosted USD** | Circle / Tether / a *named* issuer. Freeze is theirs. PegLab is not the issuer. | Only when that asset exists on Kaspa. | | **Successor C — overcollateral protocol** | Lock more KAS (or later other collateral) than you mint. Can gap. | Yes, at Maker/Liquity budget, not lab budget. | | **Successor D — licensed payment stable** | We are an issuer. Reserves are cash and T-bills. Here is the entity. | Company + bank **before** SilverScript. | Shipping PegLab’s current covenant on `kaspa:` with a 2 KAS pool is how Chainge-class wraps taught Kaspa a depeg. Mainnet does not add reserves. --- ## 2. Copy existing proofs of concept (not their brands) Steal the **mechanism**. Do not steal the claim “we are USDC.” ### Fiat 1:1 (the market’s winner, ~95% of stable value) **PoC:** USDT, USDC, PYUSD. **What to copy** - Redemption at par for cash / T-bills is the product. - Segregated reserves, monthly examined composition (GENIUS), freeze disclosed in the UI. - The issuer is a **company** that can be sued. **How they were funded** - **Tether:** operating company; float on reserves; not a public-goods grant. Do not copy the opacity. - **Circle:** ~$1.1B equity over a decade (Coinbase, BlackRock, Fidelity, …). NYSE IPO June 2025 (~$31, later a mania print). GENIUS Act 2025 is the legal floor they already lived by. 2026: OCC national trust path. That is **$10M–$50M+ and lawyers first**, then a token. - **PayPal PYUSD:** a bank/fintech balance sheet, not a Discord raise. **Kaspa takeaway:** if the pitch says dollar, you are Circle’s competitor. You need a bank, not a 2 KAS pool. PegLab will never be this. ### Crypto-overcollateral + liquidations **PoC:** Maker SAI (Dec 2017) → MCD DAI (2019) → Sky USDS; Liquity LUSD (2021) and BOLD (v2). **What to copy** - Lock more collateral than you mint. - **Redemption vs collateral** (Liquity: 1 LUSD/BOLD → $1 of ETH) pulls the price up from below. No sister token. - Fail closed on stale oracles. Caps published. Surplus buffer. - Liquity v1: immutable core, no admin pause-as-peg. v2: user-set rates; governance only steers *liquidity incentives*, not the dollar. **How they were funded** - **Maker:** no retail ICO of DAI. MKR sold over time (forum, private, then market). Polychain / a16z ~$12M (Dec 2017) then a16z **$15M for ~6% of MKR** (Sep 2018). Maker Foundation in Copenhagen wrote code; later handed governance to the DAO. Trail of Bits / early audits *before* scale. Years of SAI on mainnet before multi-collateral. - **Liquity:** protocol company (Liquity AG) + LQTY as a **fee-claim / incentive** token, not a sister-token that mints to defend $1. Security culture: multiple audits, immutability as the product. No “20% yield pays the peg.” **Kaspa takeaway:** this is successor **C**. Budget **$2M–$15M**: oracles that are not one key, liquidation path, audits, incident process, MM. Do not use PegLab’s admin oracle. ### Peg Stability Module (import someone else’s dollar) **PoC:** Maker/Sky PSM — USDS ↔ USDC at $1 until the ceiling. **What to copy** - Arb against a **redeemable** upstream dollar. - Publish the cap. When the cap binds, the peg **gaps** (DAI ~$0.89 in March 2023 because the PSM *was* USDC, and SVB froze Circle). **How it was funded** - Not a separate raise. It piggybacked Maker’s existing MKR/DAI machine and Circle’s reserves. **Kaspa takeaway:** successor **B** then a PSM. Do not raise to *be* the PSM until a named USDC/USDT (or licensed native) is on Kaspa. Chainge-class wraps are issuer **plus** bridge risk — show that in the UI. ### Hard redemption, no PSM **PoC:** Liquity. Anyone can redeem the stable for $1 of ETH. **What to copy** - The arb is on-chain. No committee “defends” the peg with a new token. - Can **overpeg** in a flight to safety. That is honest. **Kaspa takeaway:** a KAS-receipt is even simpler: redeem for **sompi**, not for $1 of KAS. No oracle. That is successor **A**. Closest to what Toccata already is. ### Receipts / programmable cash (not a dollar) **PoC:** Bitcoin DLCs and Taproot escrow; Ethereum “vesting / streaming” (Sablier, Superfluid) as *time-locked units*; local-settlement IOUs that never claim USD; Kaspa-explained **backed-receipt** (sponsor-fee, no skim of principal). **What to copy** - The unit is the locked asset. Display FX is a banner, not a peg. - Timeout reclaim (they claim now, or you reclaim after `tx.time`) — KaChat already sketched this as `KaChatPayTimeout.sil`. - Fees paid by a **sponsor**, not stolen from the receipt. **How they were funded** - Protocol grants, company R&D, or “sell software.” Not a stablecoin sale. **Kaspa takeaway:** this is the **first** mainnet that is allowed. PegLab’s teaching UI becomes a receipt explorer, not a dollar. ### What not to copy (funded, then died) | PoC | How it was funded | Why it is forbidden here | | --- | --- | --- | | Terra UST–LUNA | Huge Foundation, Anchor ~20% yield, LUNA as sister token | Backing was confidence. Do Kwon sentenced 2025. Terminal depeg. | | Iron / Titan, various 2021 “partial collateral” | Farm emissions | Illiquid “reserves.” Quantity was a slogan. | | Algo / rebase / seigniorage stables | Token sales | GENIUS/MiCA froze or banned the corner. ~0% of working payment stables. | | Ethena-class hedge as “the dollar” | VC + basis trade | CEX index ≠ redemption (Binance print ~$0.65 vs DEX near par, Oct 2025). Not cash. | | Wrapped USDT on Kaspa (Chainge-class) | Bridge operator | Kaspa already saw a depeg. Speed without native redemption repeats it. | --- ## 3. How the ones that lived actually got money Copy the **instrument**, not the tweet. | Project | Instrument | What money bought | What money did *not* buy | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Circle | Equity → IPO | Bank relationships, exams, ops, lawyers | A smart contract that *is* the dollar | | Maker | Private MKR sales to funds (a16z, Polychain) + Foundation payroll | Years of SAI, then MCD, audits, oracles | An ICO of DAI-as-shares | | Liquity | Company + fee token | Audits, immutability, frontends run by others | A governance god-key | | Ethereum public goods | EF grants, Gitcoin, Protocol Guild | Specs, clients, research | A peg | | Kaspa Core / KIP work | Ecosystem grants, self-fund, companies | Nodes, KIPs, wallets | A Kaspa USDC | | This PegLab repo | **$0 public raise** | A depeg demo | Nothing that holds $1 | **Rules for PegLab / successor fundraising** 1. **Name matches backing.** “Receipt” → grants / self-fund. “Dollar” → equity in a licensed company. 2. **No tPEG sale. No points. No sister token that mints to defend $1.** 3. **Grants pay infrastructure** (indexer, SilverScript, KaChat signer, postage). They do not buy a peg. 4. **If a lawyer says you need a license, stop the token until that is true.** 5. **If the deck needs this lab’s UI without WILL DEPEG, the deck is the bug.** Order-of-magnitude (same ladder as STABLES-GUIDE): - Lab: $0–$300k, already built, **will depeg** - Receipt on mainnet: $100k–$1M (audit-lite, indexer, wallet copy, KaChat testnet pay) - Overcollateral protocol: $2M–$15M - Licensed USD: $10M–$50M+ **company** --- ## 4. Think bigger than the covenant The chain is the court file. Mainnet fails if any of these are missing. ### Product (the scene) Two people on **KaChat phones** quote a still number, pay, claim or reclaim. Postage is KAS in the background. No PC KaChat. No `$` on a receipt. See [VISION.md](VISION.md). Without that scene, a mainnet series is a block explorer toy. ### Protocol (what Toccata is for) - Live **series** on Testnet-10 first: genesis outpoint, template hash, series bytes — wallets verify those, not the word tPEG. - Transfer + redeem accepted by the node, not only `src/engine.mjs`. - Kill the admin USD oracle on any asset KaChat would show. Receipts do not need a dollar feed. - Timeout reclaim (`KaChatPayTimeout` shape). Split / tip / stake as the same family. - Sponsor-fee or prepaid grams (KIP-21 mass) so a receiver with 0 KAS still works. Kaspa Core already flagged this. ### Wallets and indexers - KaChat iOS/Android **signs** the covenant (KasWare-on-the-web is not enough). - KasWare / Kaspa NG / Kaspium: refuse unknown series. - Indexer row per address (Kasia or documented equivalent). If the wallet cannot see UNIT UTXOs, the balance is a lie. - Explorer page: genesis, cap, pause, redeem path. ### People, law, ops - Entity that matches the claim (none for a receipt; company for a dollar). - GENIUS / MiCA if you say payment stable. Freeze UX named. - Incident: pause is a brake. Redeem stays open if backing remains. Public post-mortem habit (Liquity/Maker culture, not “trust us”). - Keys: never in git, never on the public site. Multi-person control if there is an admin at all. - Support: five failure sentences in the thread (stale, postage, unknown series, paused, timeout). ### Distribution - Phone first (KaChat). Desktop is the lab and docs. - Merchant QR that opens KaChat with amount filled. - Agents: quote → 402 → pay. Human optional. - Other messengers may speak `kchat:1:payunit`. Do not wait for them. ### What Kaspa uniquely adds (so “bigger” is not “become Circle”) - One-second sequencing, cheap settlement, public evidence. - Covenants: lock, timeout, split, prove the spend rule — **programmable cash**. - Native chat+pay already in a store app (KaChat). Ethereum never had that as a default consumer surface. What Kaspa does **not** add: a Treasury, a banking charter, or a reason to ignore the law if you print “USD.” --- ## 5. Mainnet checklist (successor A first) Do not tick “mainnet PegLab.” Tick a **receipt** (or later a named USD). ### Must already be true on Testnet-10 - [ ] One live series; transfer and redeem on-chain - [ ] Indexer shows UNIT by address - [ ] KaChat (or a native signer) can pay 1 unit in a 1:1 thread with timeout - [ ] Postage: pay does not fail because the receiver has 0 KAS - [ ] Wallets verify genesis / template / series; unknown ticker rejected - [ ] Copy: no `$`; WILL DEPEG remains on *this* lab forever - [ ] AUDIT-LITE + KNOWN-BREAKS closed or accepted; at least one external review for the successor contract ### Then mainnet (receipt only) - [ ] New genesis on `kaspa:` with published hashes - [ ] Caps published (backing, supply, dust) — not “infinite” - [ ] No admin USD oracle on this asset - [ ] Incident channel and pause policy written *before* first user - [ ] KaChat review: asset picker KAS | receipt, Child Mode receipts only - [ ] Still not called USD. Still not a token sale. ### Only if you later host a dollar - [ ] Named issuer in the first sentence - [ ] Separate asset id from the receipt - [ ] Freeze / redemption / exam story is *theirs* - [ ] Company raise if *you* are the issuer — not a PegLab meme round ### Never - [ ] Mainnet this 2 tKAS pool as money - [ ] List lab tPEG in KaChat 4.x as stablechat - [ ] Sister token / algo / 20% yield to hold $1 - [ ] Raise against tPEG - [ ] Remove WILL DEPEG from the lab to please a deck --- ## 6. Suggested build order (so “bigger” has a sequence) ``` PegLab lab (done: depeg, honesty, KasWare, phone/PC KaChat) → live TN10 receipt + indexer → KaChat signs it; timeout pay in one thread → postage / grams so zero-KAS receivers work → groups, tips, stakes, merchant QR, agents → mainnet receipt after review → hosted USD only if an issuer is on Kaspa → overcollateral protocol only with Maker/Liquity-class budget → licensed USD only as a company ``` Skipping to “mainnet chat-pay with a dollar glyph” is how a bridge IOU gets minted. --- ## 7. Short version PegLab is the proof that a cheap pool is not a dollar. Keep it. Deploy **something else** on mainnet: - First, a **KAS receipt** (copy Liquity’s *redemption-is-the-product*, drop the dollar). - Later, **host** a named USDC/USDT (copy Sky’s PSM, inherit their risk, name it). - Only a **company** copies Circle. Fund grants and payroll for infrastructure. Fund equity for a bank. Never fund a sister token. Think as big as KaChat-in-the-pocket, merchants, and agents — the covenant is the smallest part. **PegLab stays the lab. The successor earns the mainnet flag.**