A Deterministic, Reserve-Constrained Dollar Tender
Governed by the FIDES Protocol
USD-N is a digitally native monetary system that defines, enforces, and audits U.S. dollar–denominated tender under explicit, rule-based constraints.
USD-N is not a retail currency, not a discretionary monetary authority, and not a custodial system. It defines a programmable dollar rail whose issuance, redemption, and contraction are derivable from verifiable reserves and deterministic policy rules, rather than human judgment.
USD-N is governed by the FIDES Protocol, an invariant-driven fiscal engine that enforces monetary discipline, replayable auditability, and counter-cyclical behavior through code.
Protocol definition and core implementation only. Custody, deployment, distribution, and user interfaces are explicitly out of scope.
USD-N is built on a small set of non-negotiable principles:
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Determinism First Monetary outcomes are derived from explicit inputs and replay identically across time.
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Constraint Over Discretion Supply is limited by reserves and policy invariants, not committees or ad-hoc decisions.
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Auditability by Construction Every state transition is ledgered, hash-stable, and independently replayable.
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Counter-Cyclical Discipline Issuance tightens automatically during stress and relaxes only under defined conditions.
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Interoperability Without Custody External assets and signals may constrain supply without introducing trusted intermediaries.
- A deterministic U.S. dollar tender
- Reserve-constrained rather than trust-based
- Replay-verifiable down to individual issuance decisions
- Counter-cyclical by design
- Ledger-driven, not account-driven
- Governed by code, not discretion
- ❌ Not a speculative cryptocurrency
- ❌ Not a privately issued stablecoin
- ❌ Not a CBDC or surveillance system
- ❌ Not a bank, custodian, or payment app
- ❌ Not a discretionary monetary authority
USD-N defines monetary validity rules and invariants, not financial products or custodial services.
USD-N supply is constrained by explicit reserve snapshots and policy invariants.
As of v2.0.0, the reference implementation supports:
- BTC-denominated reserve accounting
- BTC/USD price snapshots for deterministic valuation
- Minimal, non-custodial BTC ownership proofs
- Explicit BTC-backed issuance and burn events
- Hard rejection of issuance when reserve coverage fails
No issuance occurs without:
- A validated reserve snapshot
- A validated price snapshot
- Invariant enforcement
- A ledgered policy action
All failures emit explicit POLICY_REJECTED events.
USD-N is not a competing currency. It is a validity layer that sits between sovereign money and non-sovereign reality.
The system forms a constraint triangle:
┌──────────────┐
│ Bitcoin │
│ (BTC) │
│ │
│ External, │
│ Non-Sovereign
│ Constraint │
└──────▲───────┘
│
Price, Stress, │ Observable Reality
Scarcity │
│
┌──────────────┐ │ ┌──────────────┐
│ │───────┼──────▶│ │
│ USD │ │ │ USD-N │
│ │◀──────┼───────│ │
│ Unit of │ Validity & │ Deterministic
│ Account │ Discipline │ Validity Layer
│ │ │ │
└──────────────┘ └──────────────┘
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USD (U.S. Dollar) The unit of account and settlement medium used by the real economy.
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Bitcoin (BTC) An external, non-sovereign reference that provides observable scarcity, price signals, and stress indicators that cannot be manipulated by USD-N or USD issuance logic.
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USD-N A deterministic validity layer that:
- derives issuance constraints from BTC-denominated reserves and stress telemetry
- enforces invariant-based discipline on USD-denominated supply
- records a fully replayable, hash-chained monetary history
- This is not a peg.
- This is not convertibility.
- This is not competition between USD and BTC.
USD-N does not force either side to change behavior. It simply makes invalid issuance observable and rejectable.
- USD retains its role as the unit of account.
- Bitcoin remains independent and non-sovereign.
- USD-N enforces discipline without discretion or custody.
When issuance is disciplined, USD-N is quiet. When it is not, USD-N shows exactly why.
USD-N incorporates deterministic stress telemetry to encode real-world monetary tightening.
The protocol supports:
- Explicit stress snapshots (e.g. drawdown and volatility inputs)
- A monotonic issuance multiplier bounded in
(0, 1] - Automatic issuance tightening under stress
- Unrestricted burns and redemptions
This ensures USD-N becomes scarcer during market stress, mirroring strong-dollar behavior without discretionary intervention.
FIDES (Fiscal Integrity via Deterministic Economic Systems)
FIDES is the policy engine that governs USD-N.
It enforces:
- Reserve-constrained issuance
- Deterministic mint and burn semantics
- Counter-cyclical supply modulation
- Explicit rejection on invariant violation
- Full replay and audit of economic validity
FIDES does not decide outcomes — it derives them.
USD-N is designed to interoperate without dependence.
- External assets may constrain issuance
- External signals may inform policy inputs
- No external system is trusted for correctness
USD-N remains internally consistent even if all external inputs are removed.
This repository defines the core specification and canonical implementation for USD-N.
- Experimental
- Dollar-denominated tender definition
- Open specification
- Designed for audit, simulation, and research
- Intended for institutional-grade review
USD-N’s CI validates buildability, core invariants, and deterministic replay on every commit. It does not test economic outcomes, market behavior, or performance; those remain explicitly out of scope. The goal is to protect mechanical correctness and governance safety through reproducible checks.
Monetary trust should not be requested. It should be provable.
USD-N exists to demonstrate that monetary systems can be:
- Auditable without surveillance
- Disciplined without discretion
- Programmable without opacity
- Strong without coercion
MIT License Open by default. Forkable by design.