Current stablecoins fall into one of two categories: reserved-backed centralized stablecoins or algorithmic stablecoins. Both models have some drawbacks. Reserved-backed stablecoins often rely on a traditional, centralized entity to facilitate the issuance of new assets. These entities are subject to regulatory forces and often operate in obscurity (users can never be 100% their stablecoins are fully-backed). The vast majority of attempts at making an algorithmic stablecoin have had trouble minimizing friction points for users, generating enough liquidity, and remaining stable (especially in periods of high market volatility). The goal of Haven is to create an ecosystem of stable algorithmic stablecoins and other synthetic assets that assume the privacy guarantees of the Monero blockchain.

The project had a rocky start to its existence. Shortly after its genesis, it received criticism after some big crypto personalities presumably helped XHV price balloon over 1,000% before it fell back to its original price. The ringleader of this so-called “pump-and-dump” scheme, Coinsignals, was later arrested on $5 million worth of unrelated fraud charges. The original developers also left the project within its first year after they didn’t deliver on their original promise and vision.

In January 2019, a small group of developers took over the project and began turning Haven into the private algorithmic stablecoin protocol it is today. Haven launched the first synthetic asset within its ecosystem (xUSD) in July 2020.

The primary use of the XHV token is to indirectly back all the synthetic assets in Haven’s ecosystem.

Haven states that one xUSD should be redeemable for $1 worth of XHV in its white paper. In order to accomplish this, the protocol introduces a mint-and-burn algorithm for swapping between XHV and the assets within the Haven ecosystem. xUSD was the first stablecoin to be enabled in the ecosystem and is pegged to the USD. When a user swaps from XHV to xUSD, the XHV is burned (removed from supply) and the equivalent dollar amount is minted in xUSD. When a user swaps from xUSD, those previously minted xUSD is burned and used to mint XHV again. This mechanism allows users to shift back and forth between its volatile native XHV token and synthetic assets.

XHV is also used for network fees and when converting from XHV to any of the xAssets in the ecosystem. The different Haven wallets and vaults are available here.

Haven, like Monero, is a Proof-of-Work (PoW) protocol. Network miners act as validators for network transactions, and blocks are validated using a unique variant of the Cryptonight mining algorithm called Cryptonight-Haven. The algorithm was designed for ordinary PC CPUs and is ASIC-resistant. A list of mining pools can be found here.

The Haven blockchain is a fork of Monero and, as a result, has a lot of similarities. Haven is a PoW cryptocurrency and uses a modified version of the CryptoNight mining algorithm previously used by Monero called CryptoNight Haven. It also follows the same emission schedule as Monero, althought it is about 4 years behind. Blocks are mined around every 2 minutes and follows an emission curve that will see the total supply reach 18.4 million in early 2026. After that, block rewards will be permanently set to 0.6 XHV per block.

As discussed in the token details section, one of the unique aspects of the Haven network is that the actual circulating supply of XHV (and all assets) is elastic depending on supply/demand in the network. Whenever an xAsset is minted, an equivalent amount of XHV is minted and vice versa. Therefore, although there is a maximum mineable supply of 18.4 million, offshore synthetic asset activity will constantly fluctuate the supply of XHV because of the mint-and-burn algorithm. There is theoretically no cap on how low or high the circulating supply of XHV can be.

Currently, a hard fork is done whenever the network is upgraded to a newer version of Monero or to enable new xAssets. However, not every upgrade to Monero is implemented into Haven. The team monitors the development of Monero and if it’s decided to be beneficial for Haven, then the developers will choose to initiate a hard fork to upgrade. It is also important to point out that a hard fork is only required for the first phase of xAssets. With future xAssets, this will no longer be required.

Haven employs an off-chain governance model where community members and core developers can suggest and discuss protocol changes. This discourse typically occurs in Haven’s Discord server. Community members can submit feedback or proposals, and the team may implement these proposed changes if they receive enough support from other users.

The project is also working to establish the Haven Protocol Foundation to guide project R&D, fund operations, and improving network adoption. The community will appoint the foundation’s initial members. In the future, all decisions will be handled by the foundation with the input of the community.