This post is my review of the Jan 15 Reserve community call and subsequent discourse. What follows is some thinking on possible outcomes, observations and concerns for readers to use (or challenge) as they see fit.
Decentralization debates often stall progress by circling a buzzword instead of the underlying mechanics, benefits and 2nd order effects, and we’ll unpack this a little in this post.
Starting with the obvious, the “D” in DTFs seems core to the Reserve product and brand, not really optional window dressing. A marketer might even argue this principle anchors the product’s credible neutrality, and something CeFi products cannot offer.
The D in DTFs
The “D” promise was fractured with eUSD in 2025. Governance had shifted to ~26 eUSD revenue-share rebalances a year with flawed evidence of better outcomes. Revenue share decreased for RSR stakers supplying overcollateralization, while attention drifted from the more important brand building and fintech partnership growing mandate. The work increased, but the value did not.
Mallo flagged (inadvertently, I think) a dynamic where company-linked wallets drowned out eUSD independent governors. This got me curious and I zoomed out, collated community signals on governance fatigue and summarized again, and later analyzed a full year of eUSD data and found a surprise. 26 rebalances actually paid less revenue to UglyCash than 12 or even 4 per year, which could have cut governance load 50–80%. Despite this, eUSD rolled on unchanged, beyond community influence. So unsurprisingly, they disengaged.
RSR Health and PMF are one in the same
This opened the door to naming a deeper problem, RSR health, and more recently pulling Reserve’s product market fit aspirations into focus.
Turns out, one can help (or hurt) the other.
RSR funds the project and nominally governs DTFs, but it’s not a part of a compounding growth loop and trust has fractured.
The implication is we have two different products, DTFs and RSR.
Getting PMF once is difficult. Twice is near impossible. Two weakly linked loops create distraction, but in the RSR health current state, it’s worse and creating counter forces.
The irony is, RSR can be a powerful part of the solution.
SaaS entrepreneur Hiten Shah shared a crisp insight thats often overlooked about PMF.
"A product without distribution is like a secret. And most secrets never get out.
When founders talk about product/market fit, they often forget the middle part. The part where people actually have to find the thing. Try it. Tell someone else. Come back. And not just because the product is useful, but because they believe in it.
The truth is, most products don’t spread on their own. People spread them.
That means someone has to push. Someone has to tell the story in a way that makes other people want to be part of it."
That someone could be the many thousands of RSR holders along with the team, but only if incentives are aligned.
Growth loops
“Growth loops” or “core loops” are popular VC/founder jargon for products with mechanisms that enable spreading naturally, either with no or reduced marketing spend. Facebook, Linkedin, Uber among many others exist today thanks to their growth loops.
One of the most well articulated growth loops in crypto I’ve found is Aerodrome. All value flows onchain are integrated in a loop.
Customer behaviors, strategy changes, or side quests fit within the loop and the community and token are integrated throughout. The Aerodrome DEX cannot function without AERO in multiple utility touchpoints. Multiple is the keyword. These touchpoints compound.
I think Reserve’s correct path could be an RSR-powered DTF growth loop with a built-in viral coefficient. Admittedly, this is really easy to say and very difficult to do, yet I think that’s what we are here for. I’ll share more specific ideas on this soon but in a separate thread.
For anyone wanting to dive deeper on growth loops, study Sarah Tavel’s hierarchy of engagement and a16z’s Andrew Chen, to start.
Back to longevity
Some combination of RSR metrics legibility improvement, recommended trust wins, and ownership through transparency or mechanisms reset can improve optics, reinvigorate community as capital and while still preserving the runway needed to cross the PMF chasm.
We might be able to prove that the market wants RSR-powered DTFs that can launch faster, safer, cheaper and more credibly neutral than alternatives. Faster because the infrastructure already exists. Safer because it is open source and battle tested. Cheaper because the RSR community already paid the upfront cost. Credible neutrality comes from the D in DTFs, in theory.
Regardless of what we prove and when we prove it, a healthy RSR community stacks the odds in our favor. As structurally aligned owners “in this together”, we improve our chances to get there faster.
Below I thought it helpful to provide some specific feedback on things in the call. Hope you find it useful.
Jan 15 community call: things to like
- Core team are talking more about RSR. Progress.
- 2024-25 recap timeline helpful. Share more of those before, during and after. More co owners = more help to achieve.
- Good idea: “More public communications like this”
- Honest recognition of structural issues on Thomas vs Nevin role. Actually already happening much sooner. Evident in early '24. Anyways, onward and upward.
- “Own your share of the world’s wealth” is really good in 7 words or less. Explains the user benefit, creates belonging. Well done. But is it referring to RSR-powered DTFs, or DTFs in general even though each DTF should have its own specific identity? Maybe the “what/when/how” will clarify this.
- Labeled and quantified definition of Reserve PMF ~goals. Nicely articulated. Creates a helpful shared-lens from which to question all ideas and initiatives.
- BFF Ugly Cash sharing labeled and quantified progress in updates and forums over last few months, with a lens on eUSD, RSR, and DTFs. Lights on for the community - thank you.
- “RSR unlocking tied to predetermined milestones” is interesting to explore. MetaDAO is running this model for projects launching in their ecosystem. Worth a study.
- Investment ROI questions aside (see below), BFF/UglyCash distribution deal “50% of customer assets are Reserve assets” is helpful visibility.
Jan 15 community call: things to further address
- No actions yet to improve RSR utility and desirability. No indication that RSR can be an accelerant to DTF adoption, rather than just an exit-liquidity token.
- “Decentralization won’t sacrifice motion on PMF.” Agree, but consider how it will help PMF. Wartime requires an army.
- In the Reserve ecosystem, staking is about 4-5% locked for 14 days. There are several ecosystems like Frax, Curve, Fx with 30-60% locked for 1 to 3 years. The virtuous or viscous circle is in the math, incentives lead the outcomes for compounding or disintegrating value.
- Ideas to keep an eye on for improving RSR utility & desirability, many of which have a positive impact even without PMF:
Locking RSR longer (years, instead of days) for a greater share of ecosystem upside
Govern specific DTFs/RTokens (currently tainted with 2025s eUSD issue)
Platform fees burning RSR (impact depends on onchain adoption, tokenization and Reserve PMF)- Govern treasury management for earning yield and managing runway
- Govern strategy/funding approvals for dev, marketing, grants, gov delegates, or side quests
- Govern RSR supply emissions management, burns, etc
- Govern ecosystem growth and referral incentives (destinations, amounts, etc.)
- Govern protocol parameters & upgrades
- Recommend Reserve shift the brand messaging to 10% philosophy and 90% how, when, where, and user value. Historically it’s been closer to the opposite and the market has answered. Getting PMF in ‘26/27 won’t have much to do with the 10 or 20 year philosophy.
- “What we all need to do” to help, requires community scaffolding and aligned incentives.
- GTM shots at $2M ea is just the economic capital. How could the community be leveraged as capital to reduce CAC and increase LTV?
- Community = Customers = Amplifiers.
- What is Reserve’s version of Tesla or Apple or Ethereum or ClaudeAI fanboys?
- Nevin’s chart on DTF incentives, gross margins, and revenue to RSR holders creates a helpful lens. BFF’s 15% RSR allocation would be good to sit on a similar chart beside other channels. How is that investment performing compared to others? May the best products & channels win.
- “Stopping RSR emissions” might come across as a meme placeholder, like earlier social, mutable ideas around “slower wallet” or “Bitcoin-style curves.” With the market maturing and professionalizing, recommend some urgency toward transparent mechanisms, enforceable rules and metrics legibility.
Thank you to everyone who vibrantly contributed to the RSR Health discussion. Hope we will harness and utilize that energy productively. Thank you to Nevin and core team for engaging - you have the hardest job of all.
