ZARP Stablecoin

ZARP is a fully collateralized stablecoin pegged 1:1 to the South African Rand (ZAR). It was built to bring the rand on-chain, giving South Africans and anyone dealing in ZAR access to programmable, borderless digital currency without exposure to crypto price volatility. The name derives from "ZAR," the ISO currency code for the rand, with the "P" standing for peg.

The Problem It Solves

The South African Rand is one of the most actively traded emerging-market currencies, yet until ZARP it had no credible, independently audited on-chain representation. Cross-border transfers using traditional rails are slow and expensive; domestic merchant payments through banks carry high fees; and participation in global DeFi markets has been effectively closed to ZAR holders who cannot take currency risk. ZARP addresses all three gaps by providing a stable, permissionlessly transferable unit of account denominated in rand.

How It Works

ZARP operates on a straightforward mint-and-burn collateral model. When an authorized issuing partner deposits South African Rand into ZARP's treasury, an equivalent number of ZARP tokens is minted and delivered to the partner. When a partner redeems ZARP, the tokens are burned and the corresponding rand is released from treasury. This keeps the circulating supply at all times backed by at least R1 in reserve per token, and the project has operated in a consistently over-collateralized state since its public launch.

Treasury reserves are held and managed by Old Mutual Wealth, one of Africa's largest institutional asset managers. The arrangement is structurally similar to Circle's USDC reserves managed by BlackRock: the stablecoin issuer maintains no discretion over the assets once deposited, and the custodian provides institutional-grade separation. The reserves sit in cash and near-cash instruments denominated in rand, meaning ZARP does not depend on crypto collateral, algorithmic mechanisms, or foreign currency exposure.

Audit and Transparency

ZARP was among the first stablecoin projects in Africa to submit to formal, independent reserve attestation. Kempen Audit performs regular agreed-upon-procedures engagements verifying that the treasury holds at least as many rand as ZARP tokens outstanding. The most recent publicly available report, signed in May 2024, confirmed full collateralization. Smart contracts across all chains were audited by Solidity Finance. The project publishes reserve data and on-chain contract addresses publicly, and became a founding member of the Stablecoin Standard initiative in 2024, an industry effort to set minimum transparency benchmarks for stablecoin issuers.

ZARP Stablecoin (Pty) Ltd operates as a representative of Inves Capital (Pty) Ltd. Inves Capital has applied for a Crypto Asset Service Provider (CASP) license under South Africa's Financial Sector Conduct Authority framework and engages actively with local regulators. FAIS disclosures are published on the website in compliance with South Africa's Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services Act.

Multi-Chain Deployment and Solana Integration

ZARP is deployed on five blockchain networks: Ethereum, Polygon, Base, Gnosis Chain, and Solana. On Solana, the token contract address is dngKhBQM3BGvsDHKhrLnjvRKfY5Q7gEnYGToj9Lk8rk. Solana's throughput and low per-transaction fees make it particularly suitable for the payment and merchant use cases ZARP targets, where the cost of settling small rand-denominated amounts on Ethereum would be prohibitive.

On Solana, ZARP is available for decentralized trading on Orca, the concentrated-liquidity AMM, and is accessible through the Jupiter aggregator. For fiat on- and off-ramps, South African users can acquire or redeem ZARP through three issuing partners: AFRIDAX, ChainEX, and OVEX, all of which offer rand-denominated trading pairs.

Key Features and Use Cases

ZARP's primary use cases fall into four categories. First, payments: merchants can accept ZARP with no network fees beyond the underlying blockchain transaction cost, and individuals can send rand-denominated value internationally without bank intermediaries or SWIFT delays. Second, store of value: holders who want to remain in rand rather than volatile crypto assets can hold ZARP on-chain without leaving the crypto ecosystem. Third, DeFi access: liquidity providers can deploy ZARP into yield-generating protocols, including Orca on Solana and Aerodrome on Base, earning yield denominated in rand terms. Fourth, cross-chain settlement: the multi-chain deployment means ZARP can move between ecosystems through bridges where liquidity exists.

As of 2025, the project reported a circulating supply of approximately R84.9 million in ZARP tokens against treasury reserves of R92 million, confirming an over-collateralized state, and had recorded more than 314,000 lifetime on-chain transactions.

Founders and Team

ZARP was founded in 2019 by Simon Dingle and Kenny Inggs. Dingle is a South African fintech entrepreneur and author who first covered Bitcoin in 2011 for a leading South African financial weekly. He previously held product roles at 22seven (later acquired by Old Mutual), the Luno cryptocurrency exchange, and Curve in the United Kingdom. He founded Inves Capital in 2016. Inggs is a veteran CTO with decades of experience in financial systems, including stints at Microsoft and Old Mutual, and leads ZARP's technical architecture. The project launched publicly on Ethereum in 2021 following two years of treasury framework development and auditor engagement.

Ecosystem Fit on Solana

For Solana's DeFi ecosystem, ZARP represents direct access to an emerging-market currency without synthetic exposure. Most stablecoin liquidity on Solana is denominated in US dollars; ZARP gives protocols the option to build ZAR-native products, including remittance corridors, savings products, and yield strategies, that serve South Africa's substantial economy without requiring ZAR-to-USD conversion at every step. Its presence on Orca and the Jupiter aggregator means ZARP is already composable with the broader Solana DeFi stack.