What It’s Used For:
DeFi: Acts as a stable asset for liquidity pools, lending, or yield farming, with manual supply control.

Gaming: Funds in-game purchases or rewards, burnable to manage inflation.

AI Agents: Serves as a transactional token in AI-driven dApps, adjustable via minting/burning.

How It Helps:
Simpler Token Management: Unlike complex stablecoins, nUSD offers straightforward issuance and destruction, reducing overhead for developers.

Safer Experimentation: Owner control prevents unauthorized supply changes, ideal for testing new economic models.

Cost Efficiency: Running on L2s (e.g., Optimism, Unichain) via Hardhat makes transactions cheaper than on Ethereum Mainnet.

Examples:
A game developer mints nUSD for player rewards, burning excess to maintain value.

A DeFi protocol uses nUSD as collateral, with the owner adjusting supply based on demand.

Interaction:
Deployer (Owner):
Deploys the contract via Hardhat, receiving 1M nUSD initially.

Calls mint to issue tokens to users or recoverTokens to fix mistakes.

Users:
Receive nUSD via transfers or minting.

Call burn to destroy their tokens or approve + transferFrom for third-party interactions (e.g., DeFi).

Data Flow:
Minting: Owner → Contract → Tokens created → Balance updated → Mint event emitted.

Burning: User → Contract → Tokens destroyed → Balance updated → Burn event emitted.

Transfers: User → Contract → Balance adjusted → Transfer event (standard ERC-20).

All interactions occur on-chain, with events logged for transparency.

Example:
Owner mints 100 nUSD to Alice → Alice burns 50 nUSD → Remaining 50 nUSD transferable to Bob.

Solution Overview:
A Solidity-based ERC-20 token contract (NUSDToken.sol) with minting and burning capabilities, deployed on Ethereum-compatible networks using Hardhat.

Core Functionality:
mint(address to, uint256 amount): Owner mints new tokens.

burn(uint256 amount): Users burn their own tokens.

burnFrom(address account, uint256 amount): Owner burns approved tokens from others.

recoverTokens(address tokenAddress, uint256 amount): Owner recovers non-nUSD tokens sent to the contract.

Key Implementation Details:
Built with Solidity 0.8.20 for modern features (e.g., safe math by default).

Deployed via Hardhat scripts (deploy.js) targeting Sepolia testnet initially.

Development process: Iterative coding in Remix, followed by Hardhat setup for structured deployment and testing.

Architecture:
Single contract inheriting from OpenZeppelin’s ERC20 and Ownable.

No external dependencies beyond OpenZeppelin, keeping it lightweight.

OpenZeppelin Contracts:
ERC20: Provides the base token standard, ensuring compatibility with wallets and exchanges.

Ownable: Secures minting and recovery functions to the contract deployer, leveraging battle-tested access control.

Hardhat:
Used for compilation, deployment, and local testing, integrating with Ethers.js for seamless interaction with Ethereum networks.

Potential Future Integrations:
Chainlink Oracles: To automate minting/burning based on price feeds (e.g., maintaining a USD peg).

Uniswap V4: For liquidity provision via custom hooks.

Ora API: For AI-driven supply adjustments (planned enhancement).

Key Features:
Flexible Minting/Burning: Unlike many stablecoins with rigid peg mechanisms, nUSD allows manual minting and burning, providing adaptability for various use cases (e.g., DeFi, gaming, or AI-driven economies).

Owner-Controlled Recovery: The recoverTokens function enables the owner to reclaim accidentally sent tokens, a practical feature absent in many ERC-20 implementations.

Event Emissions: Detailed Mint and Burn events enhance transparency and enable off-chain tracking.

Uniqueness:
Compared to Dai (algorithmic peg) or USDC (centralized backing), nUSD prioritizes simplicity and owner autonomy over complex stability mechanisms, making it a lightweight alternative for experimental dApps.

Unlike fully decentralized tokens like Ampleforth, nUSD retains centralized control, appealing to projects needing quick iteration without governance overhead.

Improvements Over Similar Projects:
Simpler than MakerDAO’s multi-contract system, reducing deployment and interaction costs.

More flexible than Tether’s opaque issuance, with transparent on-chain minting/burning logic.

Key Decisions and Compromises:
Single-Owner Minting: Opted for an onlyOwner restriction on the mint function to simplify access control and reduce initial complexity. This centralizes control but sacrifices decentralization, a trade-off for faster deployment.

No Supply Cap: Omitted a maximum supply cap to keep the contract flexible for future use cases (e.g., dynamic issuance). This avoids upfront gas cost optimizations but risks unbounded inflation if not monitored.

Basic Error Handling: Used simple require statements instead of custom errors to save development time, though this increases gas costs slightly (custom errors are more efficient in Solidity >=0.8.4).

Quick Fixes:
Hardcoded initial supply (1M nUSD) in the constructor rather than making it configurable via constructor arguments, speeding up testing but reducing deployment flexibility.

Skipped formal unit tests initially, relying on Hardhat’s local node for manual verification, prioritizing deployment over robustness.

Planned Improvements:
Add role-based access control (e.g., OpenZeppelin’s AccessControl) for multi-minter support.

Implement a supply cap or governance mechanism to decentralize minting/burning.

Optimize gas usage with custom errors and batch operations for minting/burning multiple addresses.