Libre is a Decentralized Bitcoin Bank
Traditional banks have 2 core functions - holding deposits and loaning those deposits out. Libre is a decentralized version of this where USDT is pooled and lent out against Bitcoin.
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Traditional banks have 2 core functions - holding deposits and loaning those deposits out. Libre is a decentralized version of this where USDT is pooled and lent out against Bitcoin.
Last updated
Libre allows anyone, anywhere to take out a term loan at a fixed rate using Bitcoin as the collateral. The Bitcoin is moved to a dedicated address controlled by the Crosslink MPC TSS nodes of the chain itself, and untouched until the loan is either payed back or a liquidation process has started, and the cure period has elapsed. See for more information. Unlike wrapped Bitcoin alternatives, there is no taxable event or token conversion (example: BTC to WBTC). Your Bitcoin is staked in your vault and you can borrow against the value. Once you pay you back your loan, you can take your Bitcoin out of the vault. You get back your Bitcoin, not someone else's because there is no pool, no commingling, no rehypothecation. You can easily audit it any time by looking at the balance in your vault's Bitcoin address.
Loans taken against Bitcoin go into a pre-warning state at 70% LTV, and into a warning state at 80% LTV - once in a warning state, you will have 72 hours to bring the loan-to-value back down below 70% - you can do this by either adding collateral (BTC) or paying down your loan (USDT). If 72 hours passes and the LTV is still in a warning state, then and only then will your BTC be liquidated by smart contracts on Libre.
Anyone with USDT can deposit it into the "Tether Pool" on Libre and earn 10% from any loans taken against it. All loans are backed by BTC and secured by the Libre MPC nodes.
The Libre platform has a native coin and a native purpose-built chain which facilitates the smart contract platform. It is not based on Ethereum (EVM), it is a customized DPOS chain with validators all over the world. Validators earn LIBRE. Farming in liquidity pools earns LIBRE. Anyone can .
The core value of LIBRE is that it earns Bitcoin whenever a loan is redeemed or liquidated automatically. Borrowers pay 12% and lenders earn 10%, that 2% spread is converted to Bitcoin programmatically and distributed to the pool of LIBRE stakers.
Libre was built by Bitcoiners, for Bitcoiners. As Bitcoiners, we realize that it is critical that all value ultimately be stored on-chain, as actual Bitcoin, with the user controlling these keys. However, for many DeFi applications, including liquidity pools, trading versus Tether, and smart contracts for lending, a parallel wrapped layer is needed. Libre provides that layer, and does it without designated custodians.
Libre is unique in that it features human readable account names such as “alice” that correspond to a BIP 39 seed phrase, and that exact same seed phrase controlling both native and wrapped Bitcoin.
Libre's consensus occurs through an immutable peer-to-peer protocol, called 'trustless' because there is no corruptible intermediary upon whom exchanges must depend. Libre has 21 Validators that use DPOS (Delegated Proof of Stake) consensus mechanism which enables faster confirmations compared to the Bitcoin Network. Transparency is fundamental to consensus. There are simple interfaces and APIs to validate the amount of LIBRE, the amount of BTC backing Bitcoin on Libre etc. Validators are chosen by LIBRE coin holders who stake Libre. The strength of their vote depends on the time remaining in their stake - see “Voting Power” for more details. Libre is run by a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) using community consensus of coin holders to determine how funds are allocated.
Libre is built for self-custody of assets. You retain full control of your assets and economic energy following the first principles of Blockchain. LIBRE is universally assessable with the freedom to do more than send and receive, but also allows your assets to work for you. You are in the drivers seat as no permission is needed from a third party intermediary with the use of our bridges, multi-sig (multiple signature) and MPC. We encourage safe storage of all your seed phrases and private keys as a self custodian. We also encourage you to move your assets back to native chains as often as possible - do your trading, transacting on Libre, but take your holdings back to Bitcoin and Ethereum as often as you can.
In order to incentivize independent validators to run the chain, provide peg-in and peg-out services in a sharded fashion, the LIBRE coin operates as a reward system, accruing value from the DeFI and lending ecosystem. Stakeholders use their coin to vote on validators they trust will keep the system honest. In exchange, when a peg-in or peg-out occurs, or when a loan is paid back or liquidated, the staked LIBRE holders receive wrapped Bitcoin.
Libre is in this way a Bitcoin-based ecosystem that draws Bitcoin from parts of the ecosystem, and re-directs that Bitcoin to other parts of the ecosystem in order to keep it working in a decentralized way.
Libre is designed to have no single point of failure. There are multiple wallets, validators, standby validators, APIs, and multi-sig permissions on all important system contracts. Compared to Bitcoin and Ethereum mining pool concentrations, Libre has a more decentralized distribution of block production which can be visualized .
