NEAR Foundation Recommends Wind Down of $USN and Allocates $40 Million for $USN Protection Programme Grants

The NEAR Foundation has recommended winding down $USN and set aside $40m USD for a USN Protection Programme grant, designed to protect users from a recent issue relating to USN by ensuring eligible USN holders can redeem their USN on a 1:1 basis with USDT. The Programme is now live, run by a subsidiary of Aurora Labs.

Decentral Bank (DCB) recently contacted the NEAR Foundation to advise that USN – a NEAR-native stablecoin created and launched by DCB independently of NEAR Foundation – had become undercollateralised. DCB confirmed that this was due to an initial algorithmic version of USN (v1), which is no longer algorithmic since its upgrade to v2 in June, that was susceptible to undercollateralisation during extreme market conditions.