Can This Be the Next Generation Of Minting?

Coin minting has been one of the greatest catalysts for the progression and development of societies across history.

While metals like gold and silver were commonly used across the ancient world, many believe the first coins emerged in the Lydian kingdom during the 7th century BCE.

The idea of coinage eventually spread across the Mediterranean, elsewhere in Europe, and also emerged in Ancient China.

Coins were usually hammered or casted up until the Middle Ages, when the screw press ushered in the first milled coinage thanks to the use of dies. Pressing allowed coins to be struck on both sides for the first time in history and led to some of the first anti-counterfeiting measures.

Precise striking and the ability to add words to coin edges made it much harder for thieves to make fake coins.

Industrialization over the next few centuries dramatically changed the minting process. Steam presses, later powered by electricity, gave rise to modern minting practices. Electric presses and automated feeding belts drastically increased coin creation abilities.

The rise of modern coin minting signified a great shift in economic activity and was one of the main catalysts for further financial innovation. Today’s minting process is far less labor intensive than what was seen across history and has helped fuel modern enterprise.

Now in the ever-expanding decentralized finance world (DeFi), Premia Finance has taken the concept of minting to a new and unique level. The financial instrument protocol lets users hedge risk in platform-specific native token positions and protocol risk.

How does minting play a part? On the platform, Premia users can ‘mint’ (write) custom call and put options. The Premia Options Minter is designed to allow the creation of options for tokens deminomated in DAI, WETH or WBTC. Users can customize and trade options in specific increments and with an expiration date of any week within the next year.

Those interested in writing options have a few ways to do so. They can deposit tokens, mint the contract, and sell on the platform’s marketplace. A premium is paid in DAI once a buyer purchases the option.

Otherwise, users can rely on the Mint to Sale function. This tool approves in-wallet tokens and places a Sell Order. The option is minted upon order fulfillment and the subsequent premium is paid in DAI. Collateral is held until expiration and payout follows an America-style model.

An on-chain order book allows for the purchase and sale of options to and from at market rate, provided there is an existing offer. No centralized server tracks or executes orders, meaning the entire peer-to-peer transaction process is completely decentralized.

The Premia team’s reliance on the ERC-1155 standard allows the project to offer a fungible and liquid secondary market for options contracts. A single ERC-1155 smart contract can mint a variety of tokens with different specifications, while still allowing each contact to have specific tailored parameters.

Liquidity and trade incentivization is bolstered by the Premia team’s choice to reserve 30% of the token supply. Users have incentives to deposit liquidity into meta vaults to decrease spreads and boost open interest.

Utilizing ERC-1155, the Premia Team can easily verify if a minted option is uniform to similar ones of its kind. A low options writing contract barrier has been set to mitigate the lack of divisibility with the ERC-1155 standard, the Premia team writes.

Other protocols relying on ERC-20 or ERC-721 are forced to release a new contract for each new supported token. Some will even require a new contract for every combination of token, strike price, and option expiration.

Many crypto users understand deploying multiple contracts on Ethereum can quickly add up.

Minting has dramatically evolved from the days of the Lydian kingdom to the modern era. Ancient societies worked hard to produce coins through an involved process that took up a large amount of time. Today, minting coins can be done with just one click in a safe and secure manner, thanks to the innovative power of blockchain.

The ease of minting digital coins ushers in strong prospects for the cryptocurrency world. As many remain skeptical about the longevity of fiat money, some speculate the continued popularity of digital currency could lead to more nations launching crypto coins, or even result in crypto functioning as a world reserve currency.