Acala is a specialized stablecoin and liquidity blockchain that is decentralized, cross-chain by design, and future-proof with forkless upgradability. Acala stablecoin protocol uses a multi-collateral-backing mechanism to create a stablecoin soft-pegged to the US Dollar. The Acala stablecoin protocol is essentially a decentralized monetary reserve that creates a stable currency from a basket of reserve assets, where holders of the reserve assets can spend, trade, and access other services without price volatility while retaining their exposure to (without selling) the reserve assets.
Acala powered by Polkadot is cross-chain by nature. The reserve assets can be Polkadot native assets (DOT and DOT-derivatives), Acala native assets (ACA), and cross-chain assets like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH). Acala stablecoin can be trustlessly integrated by other blockchains connected to Polkadot as well as applications on those chains. The Acala ecosystem continues to expand with a network of decentralized protocols, applications, and parachains.
As a parachain of Polkadot, Acala provides the DeFi development module for the Polkadot project to facilitate the development of DApp, for example, aUSD stablecoin, L-DOT staking liquidity, Decentralized Exchange, etc, on the chain.