The Brale team released SBC a few weeks ago, requesting comments from industry participants. It’s the second step in a series of many steps. The first was Base; the second was SBC; more are in the works. We know a lot is happening in the market, and we hope to contribute to some stability over time.
While building SBC we’ve been doing a few things in tandem. The first is building the regulatory framework to actually ship these products (Brale is a Des Moines, IA based licensed money transmitter and has been working for close to a year to acquire the anchor licenses to get this and other products into market), while building the technology required to deploy & support the products we release.
SBC isn’t designed to be the one stable, or the last stable, it’s designed to be a high quality fiat-backed stablecoin with reliable treasury management, trustworthy redemption, and a predictable business supporting it.
The exciting thing about SBC is there is nothing inherently exciting about SBC.
This request for comment is focused on gathering feedback and seeing how businesses would tweak or improve SBC to improve it for their use cases. We’re particularly interested in how to report proof of reserves in a way that is most helpful to everyone.
It’s worth repeating that Brale doesn’t want to compete with existing stablecoins. Various solutions in the marketplace have already solved significant problems, but as most of the world’s capital is still off-chain, more work must be done. It’s also worth noting that a stablecoin of this design doesn’t move capital out of financial institutions; it simply extends it the way FinTech companies do.
One of these days, I’m hoping everyone will agree on a definition. A well-designed stablecoin is simply a permissioned balance, just like a balance in any FinTech application. It can also be called a digital dollar and will likely have other names in the future.
SBC doesn’t re-imagine banking, or how money works, it’s simply another vector for efficiency and additional commerce, which is how technology has historically complemented modern banking.
There is more available about SBC here, it’s supply, and a white paper outlining it’s approach to solving various challenges in the market.
We’re actively working with a number of participants in the ecosystem who helped influence the SBC design and how some of the challenges highlighted in the whitepaper were resolved. SBC isn’t for sale yet but if you’ve got some interesting applications for it we’d love to hear from you as we continue to test and build.