Unitas Founding and Mission

Unitas introduces the first unitized stablecoin protocol for multiple emerging market currencies (EMCs, e.g., Indian Rupee INR). A unitized stablecoin uses USD to express the “value” of 1 unit of an EMC. Unitas aims to solve the problems associated with doing business in EMCs, and free emerging countries’ markets, businesses, and entrepreneurs to pursue their financial potential.

Unitas’ mission grew out of our own experiences in India.

Aditya grew up in a small Indian city and graduated from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay. Winston attended high school and university in Pune (Savitribai Phule Pune University) and then started his career in India. Wayne grew up in Taiwan and the United States but conducted extensive business with India; his startup Armorize Technologies applied formal methods to identify vulnerabilities in source code, and India was one of the company’s main markets.

We all understood the challenges posed by an EMC such as the Indian Rupee – USD liquidity was poor, banks were inefficient and unfriendly to foreigners, some banks were known to confiscate client money, and the regime lacked regulatory clarity.

When we studied Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin whitepaper in 2012, we immediately recognized that one of blockchain’s best applications was solving EMC banking and cross-border payment challenges.

We were inspired by USDT’s adoption in 2015 and Dai’s in 2019. Emerging markets have desperately needed a DeFi stablecoin protocol, and so Winston began to design Unitas in 2019.

Unitas is a decentralized EMC unitized stablecoin protocol. It mints unitized stablecoins whose value is pegged to an EMC, but are over-reserved by USD-pegged stablecoins (such as USDC, Dai, USDT, BUSD, Frax, etc.). The Unitas protocol guarantees unrestricted and unconditional conversion of its unitized stablecoins “back” to USD-pegged stablecoins. Unitas levels the playing field for emerging market businesses and entrepreneurs by elevating their financial sovereignty and allowing them the freedom to participate in global financial markets. It unleashes many emerging markets’ potential by facilitating foreign investment, cross-border payment, global market access, DeFi participation, and more.

“Unitas” was the codename for Harry White’s proposal at the 1944 Bretton Woods conference, which gave birth to today’s International Monetary Fund (IMF). White was the economist representing the US. Parts of this project resemble his “Unitas,” since our goal is to create a DeFi “translator” that can unconditionally convert an emerging market stablecoin back to a USD-pegged stablecoin.

Join the movement

We sincerely invite you to join us on Telegram and follow us on Twitter if you care for inclusive financial access in emerging markets. Let’s accelerate emerging markets by using decentralized blockchain protocols.