Questions,
answered.

Frankencoin (ZCHF) is a decentralized stablecoin that tracks the Swiss franc. It is not issued by a company: anyone can mint it against collateral worth more than the ZCHF they create, and the collateral stays visible on-chain. See What is Frankencoin.

A digital token designed to hold a stable value against a reference currency. For ZCHF the reference is the Swiss franc; each ZCHF is backed by collateral worth more than one franc.

A bank balance is a claim on one bank. ZCHF is a token you hold in your own wallet, backed by collateral anyone can inspect on-chain, and no institution can freeze it. It is not a deposit and is not covered by deposit insurance.

USDT and USDC are issued by companies against reserves they hold, and the issuer can freeze balances. ZCHF is issued by smart contracts against on-chain collateral, tracks the franc rather than the dollar, and has no issuer who can freeze it. See the comparison.

No. The franc is the reference currency, not the backing. Each ZCHF is backed by collateral (BTC, ETH, tokenized gold or shares) worth more than one franc. See How it works.

The collateral is worth more than the ZCHF minted against it. To mint 100 ZCHF, a borrower might lock ETH worth 150 francs. The extra 50 francs is the buffer that absorbs price drops before the system is at risk.

Each position has a liquidation price. If the collateral falls below it, anyone can challenge the position and its collateral is sold at auction to repay the debt. If an auction does not cover the debt, the shortfall is taken from the protocol reserve.

FCS (Frankencoin Shares) is the share and governance token: a claim on the reserve plus a vote. FPS (Frankencoin Pool Shares) is the earlier equity token that FCS wraps one-to-one; existing FPS can be wrapped into FCS. See FCS.

ZCHF can trade slightly above or below one franc. Because borrowers owe exactly one franc of debt per ZCHF, deviations are arbitrage opportunities that pull the price back. There is no issuer who redeems at one franc on demand.

In Spar stores in Switzerland, via Gnosis Pay and Zeal for card payments, with Mt Pelerin for bank transfers, in payroll with Quitt and in DeFi on Morpho and Curve. See all use cases.

Buy it on an exchange or DEX, convert francs through Mt Pelerin or DFX, or mint it yourself against collateral in the app. See exchanges and wallets.

Yes, by depositing ZCHF in the savings module, which pays the protocol rate set by governance. Holding ZCHF in a wallet does not earn anything by itself. The rate can change and is not guaranteed. See Save in CHF.

Legal assessments obtained by the Frankencoin Association classify ZCHF as a payment token under Swiss law and as a crypto-asset under MiCA, with some provisions not applying to a protocol without an issuer. The protocol itself is not licensed or supervised. See Compliance.

Smart contract bugs, a sharp fall in collateral prices that liquidations cannot cover, ZCHF trading away from one franc, and thin liquidity when you want to sell. The contracts are audited, but no system is risk-free.

A Swiss non-profit based in Zug that supports development and the ecosystem and serves as a point of contact. It does not control the protocol.

Yes, by Code4rena, Blockbite and ChainSecurity. The reports are on the Security page.