Ukranian Crypto Exchange Kuna Rolls Out Stablecoin Pegged to Hryvnia

In a first of its kind, Ukrainian crypto exchange Kuna has rolled out a stablecoin pegged to the hryvnia (UAH), the national currency of Ukraine.

Christened UAX token, the latest stablecoin is pegged to the hryvnia on a 1:1 ratio and is deployed on the Ethereum blockchain, as per the official announcement by Kuna exchange earlier this week.

As per Kuna, UAX is now being trialed by chosen Kuna users in a public beta that will expire on March 20, 2020. The intention of the initial phase of UAX deployment is to gain support from market players, technical trial on decentralized finance system and also study the “latest economic theory.”

UAX will be made available for public use in March when Kuna founder Michael Chobanian will unveil it at BlockchainUa 2020, a domestic industry conference.

Chobanian acknowledged the company’s claim that Kuna is the first company to roll out a hryvnia based stablecoin.

But, Kuna’s founder pointed out that Ukraine’s central bank trialed its national digital currency, the e-hryvnia, last February.

As per Chobanian, the e-hryvnia venture did not move out of research stage. Chobanian said “There also was a pilot by the national Bank of Ukraine but only as a research.”

Regarding the clause which will govern the new stablecoin, Chobanian underlined that there’s no suitable regulation in Ukraine at present, further asserting that Kuna will be utilizing its own framework for regulatory supervision for the time being. Chobanian said:

“So far there is no regulation. But we are the drivers of the process in the country. So at some time in the future there will be laws that will clarify the process. At the moment we use Kuna’s infrastructure. Once the law will be in place we will separate Kuna from the stablecoin operator xreserve.fund.”

The Ukranian government endorsed the latest version of a money laundering rule that will oversee digital assets and digital asset service providers in the last leg of 2019.

As the latest stablecoin is powered by Ethereum blockchain, UAX will back major Ethereum token standards, namely ERC20 and ERC865. Initially UAX wish to begin with an offer of one million tokens, as Kuna pointed out. At the time of writing this article, the value of one million Ukranian hryvnia is worth nearly $40,000.

For the purpose of guaranteeing the 1:1 peg with the hryvnia, Kuna exchange intends to enforce an audit method referred to as Proof-of-Reserve.

Followed by top cryptocurrency exchange such as the US based Kraken, a Proof-of-Reserve program aims to offer an independent, cryptographically validated audit to guarantee that enterprises possess reserves equivalent or more than total funds of customers.

In March last year, UAX was initially cited by Kuna exchange through its Telegram channel. In the same month, the exchange unveiled the UAX website, pointing that the endeavor is based on a private trial.

Unveiled in March 2014, Kuna exchange turned out to be the first Bitcoin exchange platform in Ukraine.

Michael Chobanian, founder of Kuna exchange, also leads Bitcoin Foundation Ukrain, which is Ukraine’s crypto sector and blockchain association. After becoming member of the association in April 2014, Chobanian was elected as president of Bitcoin Foundation Ukraine in May 2018.