Aurum

An open-source, fully on-chain synthetic gold (XAU) exposure protocol on Stellar Soroban — with a live price-reconciliation dashboard built from real forex/gold market trading practice.

The problem

Gold is having a moment on Stellar. Institutional, custody-backed tokenized gold (e.g. Matrixdock's XAUm) launched on Stellar in mid-2026, and Stellar's tokenized RWA base has grown into the billions. But every gold-on-chain option today is custodial: a real bar sits in a vault, and the token is a claim on it, issued and controlled by a centralized entity.

There is no open-source, fully on-chain, over-collateralized synthetic gold instrument on Soroban — the model that DeFi users on other chains (e.g. synthetic assets on Ethereum) take for granted. Aurum fills that gap: a permissionless contract where anyone can mint synthetic XAU exposure against locked collateral, with no custodian and no vault.

It also solves a quieter, equally real problem: gold oracle feeds disagree with each other and with the real spot market, sometimes by enough to matter for traders. Aurum's dashboard treats this as a first-class feature, not an edge case — it shows live deviation between Stellar-native oracle feeds (Reflector, DIA) and reports the spread the way a forex trader actually watches it during London/New York sessions.

What it does

1. SyntheticXAU Soroban contract — lets a user lock USDC as collateral and mint a synthetic XAU-pegged token at a configurable collateral ratio (e.g. 150%). Includes burn/redeem and a liquidation path if the collateral ratio falls below the maintenance threshold.
2. Oracle aggregation service (FastAPI) — pulls gold price feeds from multiple Stellar-native oracle sources (Reflector, DIA), computes a median/TWAP price, and feeds it to the contract.
3. Reconciliation dashboard (Next.js) — shows the on-chain aggregated price next to real XAUUSD spot, flags deviation beyond a configurable threshold, and includes session-aware context (London / New York trading hours in WAT) that's directly informed by live forex/gold trading practice rather than generic DeFi UX.

Architecture

┌────────────────┐   ┌────────────────┐
│   Reflector      │   │      DIA         │
│   Oracle (SEP-40) │   │   Oracle (SEP-40) │
└────────┬────────┘   └────────┬────────┘
         │ price feeds          │
         ▼                      ▼
   ┌──────────────────────────────────┐
   │     FastAPI Oracle Aggregator      │
   │     median / TWAP computation       │
   │     deviation vs. real spot XAUUSD  │
   └────────────┬───────────────────────┘
                │ price push
                ▼
   ┌──────────────────────────────────┐
   │   SyntheticXAU Soroban Contract    │
   │   mint / burn / liquidate           │
   │   collateral ratio tracking          │
   └────────────┬───────────────────────┘
                │ contract calls / events
                ▼
   ┌──────────────────────────────────┐
   │   Next.js Dashboard                 │
   │   mint/redeem UI, Freighter wallet   │
   │   reconciliation chart, alerts       │
   └──────────────────────────────────┘

Layer	Stack
Frontend	Next.js 14, TypeScript, TailwindCSS, Freighter wallet integration
Backend	Python 3.12, FastAPI
Contract	Rust, Soroban SDK
Database	Supabase (Postgres) for price history
Cache	Upstash Redis for live price cache
Network	Stellar Soroban (Testnet → Mainnet)

⚠️ Disclaimer

This is an open-source educational/research protocol exploring synthetic asset design on Soroban. It is not audited, not financial advice, and should not be used to mint real value-bearing positions on mainnet without a professional security audit. See docs/risks.md.

Getting started

Prerequisites

• Node.js 20+
• Python 3.12+
• Rust + stellar-cli
• Supabase project + Upstash Redis instance (free tiers are enough)

Contract

cd contract
cargo build --target wasm32-unknown-unknown --release
cargo test
cargo clippy --target wasm32-unknown-unknown -- -D warnings

# Build a deployable WASM (uses the wasm32v1-none target):
stellar contract build

# Deploy to testnet
stellar contract deploy \
  --wasm target/wasm32v1-none/release/aurum_synthetic_xau.wasm \
  --source-account <YOUR_TESTNET_ACCOUNT> \
  --network testnet

Latest testnet deployment: CDDOQRCE5LNJQBELCCRWSQGZR6U2WM6SZDUAUABSURIKUVEEOKP7QW6F

Backend

cd backend
pip install -r requirements.txt --break-system-packages
cp .env.example .env
uvicorn app.main:app --reload

Frontend

cd frontend
npm install
cp .env.example .env.local
npm run dev

Project status

Early and active — see open issues, many tagged good first issue.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

Apache-2.0, see LICENSE.