Beanstalk (cryptocurrency)

Beanstalk Protocol is a decentralized credit-based stablecoin protocol. It was launched in August of 2021 by a group of anonymous developers and economists using the pseudonym Publius. Publius was actually the psuedonym of the authors of the Federalist Papers, including Alexander Hamilton, the first secretary of the treasury. The whitepaper begins with the following quote by Hamilton: “A national debt if it is not excessive will be to us a national blessing; it will be powerful cement of our union.”

This is the key insight of Beanstalk. A decentralized, credit-based stablecoin is far superior to a collateralized stablecoin because (1) it is resistant to regulation & other centralized failure modes and (2) as demand for Beans grows, instead of scale penalizing users with negative carry costs, the growth of Beanstalk benefits users by distributing a yield back to anyone who is staking Beans.