DigiByte Activates DigiDollar, UTXO-Native Stablecoin

DigiByte activated DigiDollar on mainnet in mid-July 2026 through a miner-signaled soft fork. The feature shipped in DigiByte Core v9.26, which rebased the network onto a Bitcoin Core v26.2 codebase. DGB’s market price rose more than 23% around the activation.

DigiDollar is pegged to the US dollar and implemented inside DigiByte’s consensus rules. Users mint DigiDollar by creating time-locked collateral positions that lock DGB coins at the protocol level. Locked coins are removed from active circulation for the duration of the lock.

Collateral and redemption rules are enforced by UTXO scripting in the consensus layer rather than by a separate issuer or external smart contracts. Because collateral is time-locked instead of margin-monitored, the system does not use automatic liquidation engines to close positions during price swings.

Price data for minting and redemption is supplied by an oracle roster with 35 slots. The system requires a seven-signature MuSig2 Schnorr quorum to produce the DGB/USD feed and draws on multiple exchange APIs including Binance, KuCoin, Gate.io, HTX and Crypto.com. The oracle layer remains an explicit trust surface for the protocol.

DigiByte has a fixed maximum supply of 21 billion DGB. Each coin locked as collateral is removed from circulation for the lock period, linking stablecoin issuance to on-chain collateral scarcity. Reserve-backed stablecoins are issued by companies and live offchain, while many collateralized tokens run in smart contracts on account-based chains.

Any change to DigiDollar’s rules requires a network upgrade using the same miner-signaled process that activated the feature. The model depends on collateral that is subject to market volatility. DigiByte launched in 2014 and its native token has less liquidity than tokens on larger chains.

DigiByte enabled x402 AI agent payment support on mainnet shortly after DigiDollar’s activation. Founder Jared Tate framed AI agent payments as DigiDollar’s primary use case and argued that autonomous systems transacting at high frequency need low fees and fast settlement; DigiByte’s 15-second block time is presented as meeting those needs.

Developers describe DigiDollar as the first stablecoin whose full lifecycle is enforced inside a UTXO blockchain’s consensus code, without an issuing company or external smart contracts.