How does it work?

Haven uses what is known as a 'mint & burn' process to convert between all supported assets on the network. Once a person owns XHV (the volatile Haven base currency) that can then be used as network collateral to convert to any other supported xAsset. When a user converts from XHV to xUSD, they mint xUSD and burn the equivalent USD worth of XHV.

This can be simply explained by the example below:

Anne owns 200 XHV with a market value of $2. She decides to convert all of her XHV to xUSD so (200 x $2 = $400) therefore she receives 400 xUSD (minus fees). This process is carried out in her own private digital vault with no 3rd party intermediaries, or the need to use a centralised exchange.

The assets on the network are known as xAssets.