Haven is a community-led, grassroots project and as such is open for everyone to contribute to. The code is open-source and allows for anyone to build additional products on top of the codebase. We are a large and diverse community with many skills that have been utilized to help build out and strengthen the project and protocol so please reach out if you’d like to get involved in building a fairer and more inclusive financial future for all.

Haven Protocol was started by two anonymous developers in Feb 2018. Over the course of the next year it became clear that they were unable to complete the project and deliver a working product. At that time a group of the Haven community came together to finally fulfil the promise of what we believed to be one of the most important and potentially disruptive financial technologies in the space. In July 2020, the world’s first and only private stablecoin, xUSD was launched to Haven’s mainnet.

You can read all the details on the project history here.

Haven can be used by anyone who wishes to hold and use their wealth privately and have access to a range of digital currencies and assets all within one network.
It can be used for:

Anyone who wants to store value outside of the traditional banking system without giving up their privacy and autonomy. Only you can access and use your wealth as you see fit.

With a range of asset classes live on mainnet including major fiat currencies, precious metals as well as a Bitcoin tracker Anyone using the network can convert between all supported assets within their own digital vault. No counterparty, no 3rd party permission required and no limit on liquidity within the vault. For the full suite of assets available see our xAsset Guide here

Haven can be used for anything that does not require instant settlement and where privacy is desired. Haven offers a low cost, fast and always-on option for anyone to use to transfer value globally. As part of this a WooCommerce plug-in for Haven offers a simple solution for any business to easily integrate Haven payments into their store.

More details can be found here

Haven’s base currency [XHV] acts as the collateral for the entire network of xAssets. It is based on Monero, and as such inherits all of Monero’s privacy features. It is a Proof-of-Work cryptocurrency.

As of Apr 2022 there are around 25 Million XHV in circulation but due to the way the protocol works this will fluctuate according to the demand for the other xAssets in the network.

There are two separate parts to the supply schedule as described below:

Part 1 is from mining: This is the same schedule as Monero with a max supply of 18.4 Million plus tail emission. This doesn’t change regardless of network growth or use of xUSD etc.

Part 2 is from minting and burning: There is no limit to how many XHV or other xAssets can be in circulation at any one time due to the mint and burn. To create XHV from xUSD the protocol just generates the same USD value of XHV as you held in xUSD. Because of this the supply is elastic and changes depending on demand for assets.

The live circulating supply can be found here

Following on from the successful launch of xUSD in July 2020, further xAssets have been added to the network. They have been added in two phases with the first four including Gold, Silver, Euro and Chinese Yuan. Phase two expanded on the range of major fiat currencies (inlcuding the British Pound, Swiss Franc and Australian Dollar) as well as the world’s first private synthetic Bitcoin.

With the release of xUSD, Haven has added the world’s first coloured coin implementation on the Cryptonote protocol.

It means there is theoretically no limit to the number or range of assets that could be added to the network. The only limiting factor is that we would need to be able to get a price feed into the network in order to carry out asset conversions.

No. Haven has not carried out an ICO or taken on any outside funding. Nor is there any intention to do so.

Funding comes from a 5% governance fee as well as asset conversion fees. It is spent on essential infrastructure, marketing, and developer/project costs. We also have a committed and rapidly growing community that gives many hours to marketing and project awareness.

Haven uses the same privacy features as Monero, including:

• Ring Signatures
• Ring Confidential transactions (RingCT)
• Stealth Addresses

Yes, Monero’s privacy feature set is widely considered to be the benchmark within cryptocurrency. All transactions and account balances are fully private including the sender, receiver and the amount. Privacy in Haven is by default, meaning there is no way to accidentally make a transparent transaction. Further details can be found in the Haven Whitepaper.

Like any other account, there will be sensitive information that a user may not want to be publicly available. This is especially true for personal financial data that, if stolen, can be used by unscrupulous parties to potentially steal those funds. The privacy features of Haven make that much less likely to happen.

Haven (and xUSD) are available to buy from a number of crypto exchanges or as it is a PoW currency it can also be obtained by mining. The current list of exchanges and mining pools can be found on our website. The integration of Haven into the THORChain liquidity protocol will, for the first time ever, allow true cross-chain swaps between XHV, xUSD, and other major cryptocurrencies such as BTC, ETH, etc. It will also allow users to earn a yield on their Haven asset holdings. More details can be found in our Knowledge Base here.

Your money is stored in a digital vault. You can think of this as a private offshore account that only you can access and control. There are vaults available for all major operating systems and platforms including mobile and desktop and different options depending on your technical knowledge.

Once you have XHV or xUSD in your vault you can then convert to any other supported xAssets within the vault with no limits on the amount and no conversion slippage.

There are different vaults available including:

This is the simplest method for those using computers, tablets or mobile devices who do not wish to run their own node.

For desktop users who wish to have a simple to use interface but with the option of running their own node or using a remote one. It is available for Linux, MacOS and Windows users and can be downloaded here

This is generally used by those with a greater technical background and a working knowledge of the terminal on their computer.

The latest CLI Vault version can be downloaded here

Your vaults are protected by a password that you set up and must remember in order to access your funds. During the process of setting up the vault you will be given a 25-word seed phrase. Should you lose your password you can restore your vault using this seed.

Absolutely, as long as they have a Haven vault then you can send XHV or any of the other supported xAssets anywhere in the world quickly, securely and extremely cheaply.