tl;dr: Union protocol is peer-to-peer credit onchain. Union now support uncollateralized USDC credit lines with a Union credit network deployed to Base.

A bit of background

Union protocol is a member-owned peer-to-peer(p2p) credit network where any account can permissionlessly underwrite any address.

Giving every address the ability to borrow against that trust, no collateral needed.

This enables individuals to manage their own risk and lend to any trusted friend, developers to create programmable credit lines, and robots the ability to underwrite and borrow onchain, just like a human.

Union protocol v2 has been live on the OP chain with a DAI credit network for over a year now, and has generated more than $100k in permissionless originations.

The News

One of the most significant points of friction for people and the largest request by far has been to support USDC.

You might be able to guess where this announcement is going….

We are very excited to announce that Union credit protocol has been deployed to Base MainNet, with USDC as its underlying asset. This means you can now stake and borrow USDC directly, no swapping required.

You can start playing with it now at app.union.finance. (click the base option)

Why Base and USDC is especially exciting for Uncollateralized Borrowing?

In the past year, we have been impressed with both the Base team's and the wider Superchain ecosystem of app builders focus on exploring native onchain use cases, beyond price speculation. Crypto-native credit works best if it’s underwritten by crypto-native earnings.

Coinbase users are also able to convert USDC <-> USD without fees, which removes a layer of friction and cost—making onchain credit more affordable to use for off chain use cases.

We're also excited to see all the exploration around onchain AI agents. While traditional credit needs proof of humanity, Union protocol doesn't distinguish between human, smart contract, or dao. If you want to trust an AI or an AI wants to trust you, that's your choice. Robots are first-class citizens on Union.

There are also $36,931,146,342 USDC onchain.

What comes next?

Safety and security of funds is the first and last thing with DeFi, and at Union.

Supporting USDC required a significant refactor to the Union v2 contracts; USDC uses 6 decimals instead of the standard 18, so v2.1 now supports tokens with arbitrary decimals.

While we take measures to ensure any code we write is as bug-free as possible, including a $70,000 Audit contest with Sherlock (read the full report), full test coverage, and independent auditors.

There is always risk when deploying or interacting with code everyone can interact with.

With onchain credit, there's the added risk that most people have only experienced credit as a black box that personal data goes in and credit comes out. This is different.

What happens if you underwrite someone and they turn out to be untrustworthy? The flipside to no one being able to tell you who you can underwrite is that no one can stop you from trusting someone you shouldn't. If that happens your funds are go. So start small. $1

For the initial deployment, there will be a 3of5 admin key and 1of5 pause guardian for any emergency fixes until the UnionDAO votes to support this deployment with a UNION drip. At that point, all admin and upgradeability powers will be migrated to behind Union DAO governance and its time lock.

Getting Started with Credit Onchain

This week, we invite you to try Union credit on Base, help us test the UI, and learn what new things you can do with crypto-native credit lines.

How to get started?

1. Stake a small amount of USDC and vouch for all your friends.

2. Invite your friends: when someone registers with your referral link (on both OP-DAI and BASE-USDC) you'll get ETH and points.

3. Mint this post*

4. Report bugs: UI on tg and contracts via the Sherlock bug bounty program.

5. Follow @union on warpcast (+100pts)

6. Join the Community telegram : https://t.me/+7HAfo7DmmIk4OGIz

7. Vote to support this new deployment if you're a member of UnionDAO.

As a thank you for reading to the bottom, here's a preview of the Union Point Progam, to be announced fully tomorrow:

If you share your referral link or send the Mint One Gift One (MoGo) NFT to a friend, you will be set as their referrer, receive an ETH rebate, and you'll both be registered for FREE.

You earn points for activity and the activity of your referrals. If you're already a user on OP, you might already have some points.

*The Mint One Gift One NFT for Base is this post. Mint and send this post to a friends address for a fun surprise :)

Important Links:

• App: https://app.union.finance

• Telegram (for Community and Announcements): Invite Link

• Points Leaderboard: https://www.stack.so/leaderboard/union-points-program

• Twitter: https://x.com/unionprotocol

• Warpcast: @union / channel: union

Deployment Details:

• Deployment Addresses: https://github.com/unioncredit/union-v2-contracts/blob/f6290f5d795e4498574a856dd3d165364dee2b34/deployments/base-mainnet/deployment.json

• Config: https://github.com/unioncredit/union-v2-contracts/blob/base-mainnet/deployments/base-mainnet/config.json

• Pause guardian Safe: 0xF7dc916eC6ee854b3a32f5D8DcF2ED0582e05Dc3

• Admin Safe: 0x567e418D831969142b52228b65a88f894e2D79a8