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title: ICHI - FAQ
tags: [ICHI]

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title: ICHI - FAQ
tags: ICHI
description: ICHI frequently asked questions; all-in-one resource. All information from https://docs.ichi.farm/
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# ICHI.org - FAQ

## [ICHI](https://docs.ichi.farm/)

ICHI is a self-sustaining, community governed infrastructure that enables any other [cryptocurrency](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/cryptocurrency.asp) community to create and govern their own in-house, non-custodial oneToken (a stablecoin valued at $1). You must buy that community's cryptocurrency to mint their oneToken. You can use these oneTokens to buy or sell goods and services, pay expenses and taxes, or to create USD exposure in DeFi (decentralized finance) applications.

### **Why can't you just use the cryptocurrency (ie, Bitcoin) to do business activity?**

You can't grow a business without the ability to predicatbly pay expenses, control risk, and/or set aside funds for taxes. That makes volatile, scare coins unusable for real business. At the same time, it hurts every time you sell a coin for fiat currencies (money issued by governments rather than software) or stablecoins don't economically drive the value of that coin's treasury. ICHI makes it possible to community [hodl](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/hodl.asp) (hold your coins rather than selling them) your favortite coin while also doing real business.

### **What does it mean to govern a community treasury? What can they do?**

Each stablecoin represents a vote that decides what actions to take with the cryptocurrency paid to mint stablecoins.  Proposals may include the following actions:
- selling coins to buy more USDC and deposit it to the collateral,
- investing the coins in DeFi (decentralized finance) contracts and earning yield,
- paying adoption incentives for users to spend or save the stablecoin, and
- paying grants to build applications and systems that support the stablecoin.

This is not an exhaustive list.  The community may propose and vote on any proposal.

### **What happens if the cryptocurrency goes down in value or if the community spends the entire treasury?**
It is designed to be irrelevant as you redeem stablecoins for $1 of USDC but no design can completely eliminate [risks](https://docs.ichi.farm/risks/risks).

### **Could I just mint more votes than anyone else and take the treasury?**
[Multisig](https://www.coindesk.com/what-is-a-multisignature-crypto-wallet) (wallets whose transactions are signed by multiple different people) signers, elected by the community, must sign transactions.  Most cryptocurrency communities stablecoins will implement governance policies that stablecoin holders can't vote themselves into the treasury and can only recapitalize the USDC to the amount of outstanding stablecoins.

----------------------------------

## [ICHI Community Tenets](https://docs.ichi.farm/introduction/ichi-tenets)

1. Every crypto community deserves an in-house stable currency.
2. Voting power derived from ICHI governs ICHI.
3. Only a member coin's community governs its treasury.
4. ICHI earns proportion to the growth of community treasuries.

### **What are community tenets?**
**Tenets** are the fundamental values that underly every action, decision or move the **community** makes. Any **community member** may propose a change to a **tenet**. After rigorous debate, the **community** may vote to change, add, or remove a **tenet**. Over time, we will learn better **tenets**.

### **What is a member coin? What are the current member coins?**
A member coin is a token or cryptocurrency with its own ICHI stablecoin. The current member coins are Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Chainlink (LINK).  The corresponding stablecoins are oneBTC, oneETH, and oneLINK. 

### **How are member coins selected by the ICHI community?**
A new member stablecoin is added whenever the ICHI community votes on and passes a proposal to create a new stablecoin for that coin.

---------------------------------------

## [oneTokens](https://docs.ichi.farm/introduction/the-win-win-design-of-ichi)

oneTokens provide the hard peg of centralized stablecoins without sacrificing on decentralization.
oneTokens keep their value at $1, are purely on-chain, and accrue a community treasury in each oneToken's cryptocurrency. 

### **How is it possible to mint a new ICHI stablecoin for $1 of value?**
Decentralized oracles (live price feeds provided by networks of computers) determine the price of two assets in US dollars: USDC (a stablecoin issued by regulated financial institutions, backed by fully reserved assets, and redeemable on a 1:1 basis for US dollars) and the member coin.  You mint a new stablecoin by paying exactly 1 US dollar in two parts (part USDC and part member coin) as calculated by these oracles.

### **How is it possible to redeem an ICHI stablecoin for $1 of value?**

You redeem a stablecoin for exactly 1 US dollar of USDC, less a redemption fee. The price of USDC in US dollars is provided by decentralized oracles.

### **What does 100% on-chain mean?**

You can see the USDC collateral and the coins paid to mint on the Ethereum blockchain as well as the entire transaction history of minting, redeeming, and any treasury actions.  If the coins or USDC are used by the coin's community to create DeFi (decentralized finance positions), you can see these transactions and positions in the corresponding smart contracts.

### **What is the community treasury?**

You pay in member coins to mint a coin's stablecoin.  These coins remain in a community treasury because you only get back USDC when you redeem the coin's stablecoins.  The coin's community decides what to do with this treasury by voting with the stablecoin itself.  A common action may include selling part of the community treasury to buy more USDC and deposit it back into the stablecoin's USDC collateral.

### **What is over-collateralization?  How does it become over-collateralized?**

There are two types of reserves backing an ICHI stablecoin: the USDC collateral and the coin's community treasury.  Each of these reserve assets are visible on-chain.  The stablecoin is 'over-collateralized' when the dollar amount of the sum of the USDC collateral and the community treasury is more than the number of circulating stablecoins.  The possible drivers of over-collateralization may include the following:
- Minting and/or redemption fees stay in USDC reserves.
- Coins paid to mint are not paid back when you redeem and may grow in value.
- Anyone can send coins into the community treasury.
- Anyone can send USDC into the USDC reserves, including the community treasury.
- USDC reserves and/or coins may be invested in yield-bearing DeFi positions by its community.
- The stablecoin may be minted with a yield bearing coin.

This is not an exhaustive list and the implementation of some (or all) of these drivers is determined by coin's community.

--------------------------------------------

## [Fair Launch + Ichinomics](https://docs.ichi.farm/introduction/ichi-tokenomics)

ICHI has been community owned and governed from the first block:
- No pre-sale
- No ICHI compensation to core team until 3 months after launch.
- 5M ICHI HARD CAP - All 5M went to Farming Contract
- Current Farming rate is 0.5 ichi per block
- ICHI halvings are scheduled by community vote
- ICHI is farmed to the ICHI Community Treasury, any unallocated ICHI is returned to farming contract
- Ichipowah controls ICHI Community Treasury
- Ichipowah is calculated by staked ICHI + ICHI in the Sushiswap ICHI-ETH Pool

**Ichinomics**
A oneToken's treasury can be used on any proposal passed by the holders of that oneToken. That said, it probably looks like this:

1. Farm ICHI stablecoin pools, earn ICHI,
2. Pair ICHI with treasury asset, provide to ICHI liquidity pools, earn more ICHI,
3. Invest in other protocols and in systems to drive adoption,
4. Provide better interest when saving, increasing oneToken adoption, and
5. Provide discounts when spending, increasing oneToken adoption

#3 is most interesting as the treasury can be used to solve the pains of specific crypto projects - more to come on this!  But take a look at wing.finance’s reason for wanting a oneToken as an example.

#1-5 all grow treasuries and ICHI governance rewards (2% management, 20% performance) increase as treasuries grow. You must stake ICHI into the xICHI pool to get a share of these rewards.

### **What is bumper crop farming? What happened to it?**
The initial design included a bumper crop farming game designed to reward skill (not just proportional wealth).  The goal was for ICHI to go viral based on the success of this game and to distribute 5 ICHI per block to game players and 5 ICHI per block based on proportional liquidity.  While it worked, it was fantastic!  However, after 3 days, irrigation bots started manipulating the system with Ethereum gas transactions in the thousands of dollars while selling ICHI into the market.  The community voted to turn off bumper crop farming and slow down the ichi distribution rate.

### **How were you able to slow the ICHI distribution rate to active pools?**
A new pool was created that is only farmed by the ICHI community treasury. 4.5 ICHI per block are currently being rewarded to this pool.

### **What are ICHI halvings?**
An ICHI halving event is when the rewards for farming ICHI are cut in half. ICHI halvings happen when the ICHI community puts forward a proposal to have a halving and passes it.

### **Can the ICHI treasury be used on things other than farming?**
Yes, the ICHI treasury can be used on any proposal passed by the ICHI community.

### **When does xICHI get paid ICHI? Can I see an APY?**
These payments may be made by oneToken treasuries frequently or infrequently so an APY will only be available in hindsight.  The best way to avoid missing a payment is to keep your ICHI staked in xICHI.  As a bonus, this also makes your ICHI eligible for Ichipowah voting.

-----------------------------------------

## [Where to get ICHI?](https://docs.ichi.farm/introduction/where-to-get-ichi)

You may swap ETH for ICHI on Sushiswap or 1inch:

ICHI-ETH (Sushiswap.fi): https://sushiswap.fi/pair/0x9cd028b1287803250b1e226f0180eb725428d069

ICHI-ETH (1inch, compatible with more wallets): https://1inch.exchange/#/ETH/ICHI

It is best to mint ICHI stablecoins, but you need to acquire the assets necessary for minting.  You mint stablecoins with USDC and (wBTC, ETH, or LINK). You can check various decentralized exchanges and asset pairs on 1inch to get the best price on these assets:

USDC-ETH: https://1inch.exchange/#/USDC/ETH

wBTC-ETH: https://1inch.exchange/#/ETH/WBTC

LINK-ETH: https://1inch.exchange/#/ETH/LINK

### **What about centralized exchange listings?**
Whitebit.com has listed ICHI.

### **When will ICHI be listed on XYZ exchange?**
There is no team or specific person you can count on for exchange listings or liquidity. Listing proposals may be submnitted by an ICHI community member at any time and voted on by the ICHI community. 

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## [ICHI Terminology](https://docs.ichi.farm/introduction/concepts-and-definitions)
Ichi terminology

### Stablecoins
A coin designed to remain at $1 of value.  You may mint stablecoins by depositing $1 of value in two parts: part collateral coins, part member coins.  These are typically named oneX where X is the member coin.  For example, oneBTC is Bitcoin's stablecoin and oneETH is Ethereum's stablecoin.

### Liquidity Pools
ICHI leverages Uniswap and Sushiswap liquidity pools to maintain the price of stablecoins.  Here is a resource that explains this concept: https://uniswap.org/docs/v2/core-concepts/pools/

### Liquidity Farms
ICHI distributes rewards to liquidity providers who deposit to liquidity pools sponsored by ICHI.

### **Definitions**
1. **Collateral:** These are existing stable coins.  You may claim $1 of collateral reserves when redeeming an ichi stable coin.
2. **Member Coins:** These are scarce or fixed supply cryptocurrencies that have their own ICHI stablecoin.
3. **Community Treasury:** A treasury of member coins for a specific stablecoin.
4. **Outstanding Stablecoins:** Number of stablecoins currently in circulation.
5. **Reserve Ratio:** The USD value of (Collateral + Treasury)/Outstanding.  ICHI is designed to maintain a 100+% reserve ratio.
6. **Minting Ratio:** The collateral ratio required to mint a stablecoin.  For example, oneBTC at a 91% minting ratio would be minted with 91% USDC and 9% wBTC.  The minting ratio goes up/down 0.2% every hour depending on whether the stablecoin's price is slightly below/above $1.
7. **Minimum Minting Ratio:** This is the minimum minting ratio set by the stablecoin's governance.  It starts at 90% for most ICHI stablecoins.
8. **Minting Fee:** This is the fee that you pay to mint a stablecoin.  It stays in collateral.  For most ICHI stablecoins, this is set to 0%.
9. **Redemption Fee:** This is the fee that you pay to redeem a stablecoin.  It stays in collateral.  For most ICHI stablecoins, this is set to 0.5% and will be lowered to 0% over time.
10. **Liquidity Pool:** A liquidity pool is a collection of tokens in a smart contract to enable swapping of tokens.

## [Audits](https://docs.ichi.farm/introduction/audits)

There have been two audits of ichi.farm:

1. Bramah Systems: https://github.com/ichifarm/audit
2. defiyield.info: https://defiyield.info/assets/pdf/ICHI.pdf

Remember, no audit can catch all problems.  Please review the risks tab to understand the risks involved with participating on ichi.farm.

---------------------
## **For More Information about ICHI**:


Please visit ICHI's [**Website**](https://www.ichi.org/) &/or [**Docs**](https://docs.ichi.farm/). 

[**App**](https://www.ichi.farm/#/farm) / [**Medium**](https://medium.com/ichifarm) / [**Telegram**](https://t.me/ichifarm) / [**Twitter**](https://twitter.com/ichifarm) / [**Discord**](https://discord.gg/mg28GzDC) / [**Snapshot (Voting)**](https://snapshot.page/#/ichi.eth) / [**Github**](https://github.com/ichifarm)