Add Terra USD (UST) to AAVE v2
01Summary
Add TerraUSD (UST), an algorithmic stablecoin with $8.5B market cap, to Aave as a borrowable asset only with 0% collateral factor. UST will use the Wormhole V2 bridge (USTw) instead of the centralized Shuttle Bridge, with Chainlink price oracle and rateStrategyStableTwo parameters.
- Type
- protocol addition
Key changes
- Add USTw (Wormhole UST) to Aave with 0% collateral factor, allowing borrowing but not use as collateral(high)
- Set collateral parameters to zero (Base LTV, Liquidation Threshold, Liquidation Bonus) to limit risk while enabling supply and borrow(high)
- Enable variable borrowing but disable stable borrowing for UST(medium)
- Configure 2000 basis point reserve factor and 6 decimal precision(medium)
- Implement rateStrategyStableTwo interest rate strategy for UST(medium)
- Integrate Chainlink UST/ETH price feed for oracle pricing(medium)
- Transition from centralized Shuttle Bridge to decentralized Wormhole V2 bridge infrastructure(high)
Notable concerns
- UST relies on algorithmic arbitrage mechanism through Terra's market module to maintain peg; peg maintenance depends on LUNA availability and market conditions
- Wormhole V2 contracts are noted as still in active development
- Centralized bridge risk mitigated by Wormhole but validator set governance remains with 19 guardians
- 0% collateral factor limits composability but proposal suggests this may be increased as adoption grows and risks decrease
- Proposal does not address systemic risks if UST peg fails or LUNA backing becomes insufficient
Generated by Kvorum
02Description
Simple Summary
TerraUSD (UST) is an algorithmic, seigniorage-based stablecoin. UST’s market capitalization has grown to almost $8.5B since its inception in October 2020. UST is designed such that each UST can be redeemed for $1 of LUNA and vice versa. This mechanism has kept the price close to the peg.
Adding UST to Aave should drive additional stablecoin liquidity and borrow demand to the protocol. This proposal recommends a 0% collateral factor for UST.
Abstract
The version of UST added will be USTw (Wormhole UST). The Terra ecosystem is migrating from the centralized Shuttle Bridge to the decentralized Wormhole V2 bridge. The UST peg is maintained through an open market arbitrage system facilitated by Terra’s market module. An explanation of the contraction system is outlined below: If 1 UST is trading at .99 USD, users can buy 1 UST for .99 USD. Users then utilize Terra Station’s market swap function to trade 1 UST for 1 USD of Luna. The swap burns 1 UST and mints 1 USD of Luna. Users profit .01 UST from the swap. This arbitrage continues, and UST is burned to mint Luna until the price of UST rises back to 1 USD. The reverse works if 1 UST is trading above 1.00 USD. Through this system, UST has been able to maintain its peg within a relatively tight range.
Motivation
UST is supported by major Ethereum and Terra dApps including Curve, Uniswap, Sushi, Mirror, and Anchor. We believe there will be strong demand to borrow and lend UST given its stability and liquidity profile. UST will likely drive additional stablecoin liquidity and borrow demand to AAVE. Finally, Terra has begun its migration from its centrally held bridge to Wormhole. This move should decrease the risks associated with UST while improving its network effects as it reaches more chains in the future.
Specification
- What is the link between the author of the AIP and the Asset? ParaFi Capital is an active AAVE governance participant, submitting AIPs to list stable assets including FEI, and modifying liquidity mining incentives. ParaFi is also a user of AAVE and UST.
- Provide a brief high-level overview of the project and the token UST is part of the Terra ecosystem, started by the Terra Form Labs team. UST has been live since October 2020 and has become the largest decentralized stablecoin. The number of unique holders of UST has grown substantially over the past few months, and we expect that figure to grow as UST launches on more chains.
- Explain positioning of token in the AAVE ecosystem. Why would it be a good borrow or collateral asset? UST’s on-chain and off-chain liquidity profile have improved significantly this year. Additionally, UST’s stability has improved, especially during market dislocations. We believe UST will drive more stablecoin liquidity and borrow demand to Aave.
- Provide a brief history of the project and the different components: DAO (is it live?), products (are they live?). How did it overcome some of the challenges it faced? Terra is a blockchain protocol and stablecoin ecosystem centered around fiat-pegged, seigniorage style stablecoins. Terra was developed by Terra Form Labs. The Terra ecosystem supports dozens of DeFi and metaverse applications.
The wormhole Terra contracts have been developed by Certus One (part of Jump Crypto) and audited by Kudelski. The wormhole v2 contracts are in active development. 5. How is the asset currently used? UST can be used in dozens of applications across Terra, Ethereum, and Solana. 6. Emission schedule There is no emission schedule. The supply of UST is expanded or contracted to maintain the $1 peg. 7. Token (& Protocol) permissions (minting) and upgradability. Is there a multisig? What can it do? Who are the signers? As mentioned above, we believe the main concern with adding UST is its centralized bridge solution - this changes with Wormhole.
The Wormhole Network underpins the bridge with a validator set that observes the chains it’s connected on. The Network is governed by 19 guardians that watch connected chains and sign message observations. Users deposit funds onto the token bridge from where their tokens are originating (e.g. UST on Terra) and the action is deconstructed into a message which is sent to the Wormhole Network who validates it and produces a signed message. The signed message is sent to the output token bridge (e.g. USTw on Ethereum) which verifies it and sends the user the wrapped bridge tokens. Given the track record of UST, we believe the addition of UST would pose low risk to the Aave ecosystem. 6. Market data (Market Cap, 24h Volume, Volatility, Exchanges, Maturity) Market cap: $8.5B total 24 hour volume: $100M+ Volatility: Link to volatility data: https://governance.aave.com/t/add-support-for-terra-usd-ust/6003/19 Exchanges: Curve, Sushiswap, Uniswap, Balancer, Kucoin, Bittrex, Terraswap, Coinbase, MEXC, Gemini, Bitfinex 9. Social channels data (Size of communities, activity on Github) Communities: 240k followers on Twitter, 25k in Telegram, 16k in Discord 10. Contracts date of deployments, number of transactions, number of holders for tokens
Contracts date of deployments, number of transactions, number of holders for tokens
No. of transactions: 417,173
No. of holders: 21,707
Rationale
To mitigate concerns, a 0% collateral factor will allow UST to be supplied or borrowed - not used as collateral. This limits the risk for Aave and its users in other markets. As the wormhole contracts continue to be used and UST gains further adoption, the collateral factor can be increased. The use of rateStrategyStableTwo, reserve factor, and disabled stable borrowing is similar to other stablecoins per: https://docs.aave.com/risk/asset-risk/risk-parameters.
Implementation
The UST price oracle will be served via ChainLink, which includes the UST/ETH feed. The Chainlink UST/ETH Price Feed Proxy contract address is 0xa20623070413d42a5C01Db2c8111640DD7A5A03a. UST will only be used for depositing, not as collateral. The following params are proposed:
- Strategy: rateStrategyStableTwo
- Base LTV As Collateral: 0
- Liquidation Threshold: 0
- Liquidation Bonus: 0
- Borrowing Enabled: true
- Stable BorrowRate Enabled: false
- Reserve Decimals: 6
- Reserve Factor: 2000 Following the steps from the Aave governance docs, the following contracts were generated:
- Interest bearing aUST: 0x6C35faC782Be2Db776cdF777196a47916806892b
- Variable Debt variableDebtUST: 0xd8aBEdc9CE320752e77C4A8706E64212EdE834B9
- Stable Debt stableDebtUST: 0x107ed1832647436a0D39F09e65f4aA920242C0BB
- Strategy Implementation for UST: 0x0dEDCaE8Eb22A2EFB597aBde1834173C47Cff186
- Incentive Controller: 0x036cA61C1977c6EA52222Db81F725fDBd70eFBd7
The Incentive Controller was added in anticipation of LUNA incentives to UST borrowers/lenders being proposed by the community and thus for future engineering simplicity.
References
Website - https://terra.money Twitter - https://twitter.com/terra_money and https://twitter.com/wormholecrypto Docs - https://docs.terra.money/ and https://docs.wormholenetwork.com/wormhole/ Github - https://github.com/terra-money and https://github.com/certusone/wormhole Token Contract - https://etherscan.io/token/0xa693B19d2931d498c5B318dF961919BB4aee87a5
Copyright
Copyright and related rights waived via CC0.
03Mismatch analysis
The proposal describes listing UST as a new Aave reserve with a 0% collateral factor (Base LTV, Liquidation Threshold, Liquidation Bonus all set to 0), using rateStrategyStableTwo, Reserve Factor 2000, Reserve Decimals 6, Borrowing Enabled true, Stable Borrow Rate disabled, and setting the Chainlink UST/ETH oracle feed. Action 0's decoded execute() call initializes the reserve using exactly the same token, aToken, stableDebt, variableDebt, and strategy contract addresses listed in the description, with numeric parameters (0,0,0,2000,6,true,false) matching the stated LTV, liquidation threshold, liquidation bonus, reserve factor, decimals, borrowing enabled, and stable borrow disabled values. The order of address parameters in calldata (aToken, stableDebt, variableDebt, strategy) differs slightly from the order these are listed in the description text (aToken, variableDebt, stableDebt, strategy), but since the addresses match the correct named contracts, this is not a real discrepancy. Action 1 sets the oracle price source for UST's token address to the exact Chainlink feed address quoted in the Implementation section. There is one extra trailing boolean argument in the execute() signature not explicitly mentioned in the description, but this is a routine/boilerplate parameter common to Aave's asset-listing helper and does not represent a material undisclosed action. No numeric, target, or intent mismatches were found between the prose and the decoded actions.
Generated by Kvorum
04Actions
- Target
- 0xe775…4473
- Value
- 0 wei
- Function
- execute(address,address,address,address,address,uint256,uint256,uint256,uint256,uint8,bool,bool,bool)
- Arguments
{ "0": "0xa693B19d2931d498c5B318dF961919BB4aee87a5", "1": "0x6C35faC782Be2Db776cdF777196a47916806892b", "2": "0x107ed1832647436a0D39F09e65f4aA920242C0BB", "3": "0xd8aBEdc9CE320752e77C4A8706E64212EdE834B9", "4": "0x0dEDCaE8Eb22A2EFB597aBde1834173C47Cff186", "5": "0", "6": "0", "7": "0", "8": "2000", "9": "6", "10": true, "11": false, "12": false }- Calldata
- Target
- 0xa50b…9ca9
- Value
- 0 wei
- Function
- setAssetSources(address[],address[])
- Arguments
{ "0": [ "0xa693B19d2931d498c5B318dF961919BB4aee87a5" ], "1": [ "0xa20623070413d42a5C01Db2c8111640DD7A5A03a" ] }- Calldata
05Tally
Summed from votes
06Voters
No votes recorded yet.
07Forum
- Add support for Terra USD (UST) ↗discourse · high confidence
Arguments for
- UST is a decentralized, censorship-resistant stablecoin that diversifies Aave's stablecoin offerings beyond centralized options like USDC/USDT.— inko, Krawa, Koenna, 3.1415r, Andrew
- Adding UST hedges against looming regulatory crackdowns on centralized, fiat-backed stablecoins as flagged in the President's Working Group report.— tenaxproposit, swmartin19, Ankara223, gendelphi
- UST has a multi-year track record of maintaining its peg, strong market cap growth, and deep liquidity/usage across major DeFi protocols (Curve, Uniswap, Anchor, Mirror).— wormhole, Anjan-ParaFi, gendelphi, willbank
- Migration from the centralized Shuttle Bridge to the more decentralized Wormhole V2 bridge reduces prior bridge-related risk and expands UST's cross-chain utility.— wormhole, Anjan-ParaFi, fig
- A conservative initial listing with 0% LTV/collateral factor allows UST to be safely supplied and borrowed while limiting systemic risk to Aave, with parameters adjustable later.— Anjan-ParaFi, MarcZeller, gendelphi
- Onboarding UST will likely drive additional stablecoin liquidity, TVL, and borrow demand to Aave.— Anjan-ParaFi, gendelphi, apr
- Planned partial collateralization of UST with BTC and other assets by Terraform Labs would further de-risk the peg mechanism over time.— gendelphi
Arguments against
- The proposed 'B' market risk grade seems inconsistent with the acknowledged possibility of peg failure and the very conservative (0%) risk parameters chosen.— JeremyKeating
- UST's stabilization mechanism closely resembles Iron Finance's failed IRON/TITAN model, raising fears of a similar death-spiral collapse once at scale.— JeremyKeating, Genkai.Shogun
- The Wormhole V2 bridge contracts were new and had a very low transaction count, suggesting the smart contract risk rating was too optimistic (should be lower, e.g. D/D-).— Alex_BertoG
- Massive recent UST minting (~$4.5B in 15 days) raises concerns about oversupply destabilizing the peg.— JeremyKeating
- In hindsight, supporting UST/LUNA amounted to enabling a scheme that later defrauded users, and the community should reckon with having promoted it.— Jason4, Genkai.Shogun
- UST is backed by a volatile, non-excess-collateralized asset (LUNA), making it unsuitable as a collateral asset even if acceptable as a borrowable one.— Genkai.Shogun
- Full LTV/collateral support should wait until Aave V3 arrives so risk exposure can be managed in that context rather than immediately granting high LTV in V2.— MarcZeller
Unresolved concerns
- Whether an algorithmic stablecoin like UST would actually be safer than asset-backed coins in a regulatory crackdown, or whether all stablecoins would be equally targeted.— JeremyKeating
- Whether the peg mechanism's structural similarity to the failed Iron Finance model poses a hidden death-spiral risk once UST scales further.— JeremyKeating, Genkai.Shogun
- Whether the rapid, large-scale minting of UST could itself destabilize the peg.— JeremyKeating
- Whether the Wormhole V2 bridge had sufficient battle-testing and transaction history to justify the assigned smart contract risk grade.— Alex_BertoG
- Whether the 'B' market risk grade accurately reflected the acknowledged fragility of the peg mechanism.— JeremyKeating
Notable participants
- wormholeProposer of the AIP, provided background on UST and Wormhole's decentralized bridge, and responded to risk questions.
- Anjan-ParaFiConducted and presented the formal risk assessment with proposed risk parameters, engaging with community pushback.
- MarcZellerAave governance figure who supported UST but insisted on 0% LTV pending Aave V3, voting no on a higher-LTV snapshot.
- Alex_BertoGRaised pointed technical concerns about the Wormhole V2 bridge's risk rating given low transaction volume.
- JeremyKeatingPosed the most detailed critical questions about UST's peg mechanism, risk grading, and comparison to Iron Finance's collapse.
- gendelphiDelphi Digital representative who provided supporting market data and reinforced the case for onboarding UST with disclosed conflicts of interest.
- figRaised questions about Wormhole's motives and suggested a broader partnership opportunity with Aave V3.
- Jason4Post-collapse critic condemning the community for having supported UST/LUNA.
- Genkai.ShogunPost-collapse commentator reviewing the thread in hindsight, highlighting missed warning signs from Delphi Digital and JeremyKeating.
Generated by Kvorum
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