Reserve provides an innovative and effective solution to combat (hyper)inflation through the development of Reserve App and Reserve Protocol—two unique tools which bridge the gap between consumers and businesses. The Reserve App makes it simple for everyday people and businesses, whose national currencies are subject to high inflation rates, to effortlessly convert, hold, buy, and sell in digital US dollars and global stable currencies, such as the Reserve Protocol’s stablecoin RSV. The Reserve Protocol provides a platform for the development, deployment, and stability maintenance of RTokens that are insured, collateralized, and can generate revenue and yield for their holders and those who stake RSR.
The Reserve team is dedicated to perfecting the App and user experience in Latin America before scaling to other regions. Specific focus had been placed on launching in Venezuela, due to its hyperinflation-driven, economic collapse, which has resulted in high demand for the App. This scaling model is similar to Uber’s launch in San Francisco, prior to their expansion. Unfortunately, economic stress is building around the world. There is a growing number of countries whose citizens have a strong need for an inflation-resistant currency, and Reserve provides a solution and has ample opportunity for scaling.
Reserve App takes a mixed approach of attracting and onboarding both individual users and merchants. As more users join, businesses see greater demand from their customers to accept Reserve. Conversely, as more businesses accept Reserve and onboard as merchants, their customer-base becomes exposed to Reserve. Peer-to-peer transfers become increasingly viable as more of an individual’s personal network downloads the app. With minimal marketing, Reserve has begun to establish network effects in Venezuela with just under 600,000 registered users and over 17,000 merchants accepting Reserve, making an acceleration of adoption numbers significantly easier going forward.
The protocol provides a permissionless platform for building stablecoins. As such, an influx of RToken and RSR adoption will be made possible upon Mainnet launch. Web 3.0 developers and businesses can opt to build their stablecoin using the Reserve Protocol, or to adopt an existing RToken as the primary stablecoin within their ecosystem. This aspect of the protocol is incredibly important for the growth of network effects and levels of capital injection from Web 3.0 participants into the protocol’s ecosystem.
Reserve’s vision attracted an incredibly prominent and well-connected group of investors during its initial funding rounds, while also leading to a stacked advisory board. This will aid tremendously in the Reserve’s future success.
Investors:
1. Peter Thiel (Co-Founder PayPal and Palantir Technologies)
2. Sam Altman (CEO of Open AI, Former President of Y Combinator)
3. Coinbase Ventures
4. Digital Currency Group (Parent Company of Grayscale)
5. Jack Selby (Founding Team Member of PayPal)
Advisors:
1. Paul Atkins (SEC Commissioner 2002-2008)
2. Garett Jones (Former Staff Economist to the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress and Professor for the Study of Capitalism at the Mercatus Center of George Mason University)
3. Ben Verschuere (Former Global Macro Portfolio Manager at Thiel Macro)
There are now over 195 members on the Reserve team. The team continues to evolve in order to support the ability for more users to access the App, while maintaining an excellent user experience and advancing development of the protocol.
The core team has extensive experience in entrepreneurship at prestigious Silicon Valley companies such as Google, IBM, and Venmo. The co-founder and CEO, Nevin Freeman, started up three companies prior to the establishment of Reserve, including the Paradigm Academy. His mission in life is to solve the coordination problems that are preventing humankind from achieving its potential.
The Reserve Protocol and App offer a promising solution to both high inflation and hyperinflation, which are increasingly problematic challenges that many fiat-based economies face.
While the detrimental impacts of inflation and hyperinflation-driven economic collapse are well-recognized, citizens that are subject to currency failures typically have little to no choice but to rely on their government to remedy the currency crisis. The same government that was incapable of getting rid of the root cause of the problem/to avert the crisis to begin with.
Stablecoins, pegged to the USD or a basket of tokenized assets, offer an alternative to volatile local currencies on a platform designed to be accessible to people and businesses with little or no experience with cryptocurrency. The Reserve App is engineered to provide a seamless user experience by allowing users to instantly convert local currencies to and from digital dollars and then send it between peers or use it to pay merchants.
While the Reserve Protocol and App are yet to be fully released, the team prioritizes building a foundation that will result in much-desired mass adoption. Diamond Atlas believes that Reserve has the team, strategy, and investor and advisory connections to succeed in realizing their vision of becoming the world’s immune system for inflation.
