cgUSD

Overview

cgUSD pays the yield on short-term US Treasuries by growing the holder's balance. Cygnus Finance mints it on Base against a portfolio its documentation describes as off-chain US Treasuries, on-chain stablecoins and accrued interest.

Balances rebase once a day on every working day. On each New York banking day the total supply is reset to the net value of that portfolio, which is the route by which Treasury interest reaches holders instead of the issuer. Cygnus puts its case plainly: Tether and Circle earn on their reserves, and holders of USDT and USDC get none of it. The peg is the US dollar and minting costs 0%.

The site footer names Cygnus Information Limited. No jurisdiction of incorporation appears in the documentation.

Sources: Cygnus wiki, What is cgUSD v1, Cygnus wiki, Why Cygnus, Cygnus Finance website, Cygnus wiki, Mint (protocol mechanics)

Backing and reserves

What the documentation sets out

The issuer publishes an eligibility policy, not a holdings report. Reserves are limited to T-Bills with a weighted average maturity of no more than 90 days and final maturities of 397 days or less, with at least 99% of total assets in cash, US Treasury obligations and repos secured by them. The same page describes assets in transit, held up by partner banks, partner brokers and other financial institutions it does not name.

What is not published

The words attestation, attested and proof of reserve appear nowhere in the pages listed in the documentation index. No reserve report, no reserve auditor and no custodian is named, and the withdrawals FAQ refers only to "the custodian account". The one audit Cygnus publishes covers smart contracts. Nothing on chain corroborates the Treasury holdings, and the documentation describes no proof of reserves feed.

What the contract records

The cgUSD contract splits its assets into a buffered figure and an invested figure, both readable through getTotalAssets. On 19 August 2026 the buffer held under 700 USDC and the invested figure read about 76.2 million. Their sum is the total supply. The invested figure is written to storage by handleOracleReport, so the operator reports it and the chain does not measure it.

Sources: Cygnus wiki, Why Cygnus (reserve composition rules), Cygnus wiki documentation index (llms.txt), Cygnus wiki, Withdrawals FAQ, Blockscout verified source, CgUSD contract on Base

Peg behaviour

Mint and redeem

Minting is at $1 with no fee. Redemption returns USDC at 1:1, through a queue in which each request is represented by an NFT, and the docs put the normal wait at 5 to 7 days. Cygnus sells off-chain Treasuries to fund it, a step it puts at 2 to 5 days. On fees the docs contradict each other: the withdrawals FAQ states a 35 basis point withdrawal fee, the redemption page says Cygnus will not impose any fees during the early stages of the promotion.

Where the 1:1 claim bends

The token page says the redemption price will always be $1 once fees are excluded. The withdrawals FAQ says the claimable amount may differ from the requested amount "due to significant fluctuations in the price of US Treasury bills", and that the total claimable amount could be reduced. Cygnus integrated RedStone Price Feeds on TON and BSquared. Base, the chain cgUSD is issued on, is not among them.

Sources: Cygnus wiki, cgUSD token and contract, Cygnus wiki, Withdrawals FAQ, Cygnus wiki, Redemption (protocol mechanics), Cygnus wiki, On-Chain Price Oracle

Risks

Operator control

PeckShield's December 2023 audit, report 2023-282, raised one medium finding titled Trust Issue of Admin Keys. It names the CgUSD invest function, which sends reserve assets to an address the privileged caller chooses. PeckShield marked it mitigated after "the team confirmed that all the privileged accounts will be multi-sig wallets". On chain the owner of the cgUSD contract is a verified contract named CgTimelockController.

Reserve verification

Almost all of cgUSD's recorded backing is the invested figure, and that figure arrives through an authorised report. No attestation covers the Treasuries it stands for.

Redemption

The on-chain buffer is under 700 USDC against about 76.2 million cgUSD outstanding, so redemptions wait on off-chain T-Bill sales. The withdrawal queue also has a bunker mode, which PeckShield recorded as not specifying "the exact consequence or the impact on staking users and their funds".

Contract state

The deployed mint function carries a comment reading "TODO: check if oracle price deviated".

Sources: PeckShield Smart Contract Audit Report for Cygnus Finance, 11 December 2023 (report 2023-282), Blockscout address record, CgTimelockController (cgUSD owner), Blockscout verified source, CgUSD contract on Base, Cygnus wiki, Risk Warning

What this map tracks

The Global Stablecoin Map tracks cgUSD on one chain, Base, at contract 0xCa72827a3D211CfD8F6b00Ac98824872b72CAb49. That is the only cgUSD deployment the documentation names. The wrapped token wcgUSD is separate and is not tracked here. Issuance is filed as global.

Supply and holders

The registry reads supply at about 76.2 million cgUSD and about 1.98 million holding addresses, which works out at roughly 38 cgUSD per address. Because the token rebases, holder balances move on working days without a transfer. Blockscout reports the same holder count and 2.55 million transfers.

What is not covered

The map holds no price for cgUSD, so no peg deviation is computed for it. The off-chain Treasuries behind the invested figure sit beyond what any chain read reaches. Other dollar coins sit in the stablecoin explorer.

Sources: Blockscout token record for CGUSD on Base (supply, holders, transfers), Cygnus wiki, cgUSD token and contract, Cygnus wiki, What is cgUSD v1 (wcgUSD wrapping)

Common questions