Legacy Frax Dollar (FRAX)

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Historical price evolution of Legacy Frax Dollar

Daily historical data. Updated automatically.

The Frax protocol was born in 2019 from the vision of Sam Kazemian, an Iranian-American UCLA graduate and co-founder of Everipedia —the decentralised encyclopedia that had raised $30 million USD from Galaxy Digital in 2018—, alongside Travis Moore and Jason Huan. Initially called Decentral Bank, the project emerged from a specific premise: collateralised stablecoins are capital inefficient, whilst purely algorithmic ones prove fragile. The proposed solution was a fractional hybrid model that combined both approaches.

On 20th December 2020, FRAX launched on Ethereum mainnet at launch. In its early days, the protocol accumulated over $300 million USD in TVL. FRAX started with 100% collateralisation (mainly USDC), designed so that the algorithm would gradually reduce the collateralisation ratio as market confidence grew. On 17th February 2021, FRAX became the first algorithmic stablecoin listed on Binance.

During 2021, coinciding with DeFi Summer v2, Frax v2 was launched incorporating AMOs (Algorithmic Market Operations Controllers): contracts that deploy collateral in DeFi protocols such as Curve, Aave and Compound to generate yield for the treasury, funding protocol growth without inflationary issuance. During this period, FRAX supply reached $2,600 million USD. In June 2022, FraxSwap was launched, the first DEX with live implementation of a TWAMM (Time-Weighted Automated Market Maker), based on Paradigm research.

Following the collapse of UST/Terra in 2022, Frax abandoned the fractional model in 2023 and migrated towards full 100% collateralisation. This same year, frxETH (liquid staking token) and frxETH V2 (ETH loans to validators) were launched. In January 2025, the ecosystem expanded with the launch of frxUSD, a new stablecoin backed by BlackRock's BUIDL fund (tokenised by Securitize), US T-bills and repurchase agreements, marking the first major partnership between DeFi and traditional institutional finance.

On 30th April 2025, The North Star Upgrade took place, a fundamental restructuring of the ecosystem: the FXS governance token was renamed to FRAX and began functioning as the gas token for Fraxtal, the protocol's own layer 2. The original FRAX stablecoin adopted the denomination "Legacy Frax Dollar" to distinguish it from the new token, maintaining a circulating supply of approximately $275 million USD.

Legacy Frax Dollar (FRAX) functions as a fully collateralised stablecoin that maintains its value pegged 1:1 to the US dollar through a total backing system and arbitrage mechanisms. Following the migration implemented in 2023, each FRAX token in circulation is backed by assets such as USDC, frxUSD and other assets approved by the protocol's governance. Price maintenance is achieved through an automatic arbitrage mechanism: when FRAX trades below $1, users can buy it in the market and redeem it directly for $1 in collateral, obtaining a guaranteed profit that pushes the price upwards; when FRAX exceeds $1, users can mint new tokens by depositing $1 in collateral and sell them in the market, capturing the price differential.

The ecosystem incorporates smart contracts called AMOs (Algorithmic Market Operations Controllers) that automatically deploy the protocol's collateral on other DeFi platforms such as Curve and Aave to generate additional yields, optimising the efficiency of deposited capital. System governance lies with holders of the FXS token, recently renamed as FRAX, who vote on protocol parameters and benefit from treasury growth. The ecosystem also features Fraxtal, an EVM-compatible layer-two blockchain where the FRAX token (formerly FXS) functions as the gas token for network transactions.

Data verified against external sources. Some values may have changed since the last update.