Thanks @R72, @Mosq71, @ham and @Teeb I think the concern is fair, but I’d frame the tradeoff a bit differently.
A meaningful portion of Reserve’s expected expenses and incentives are denominated in RSR, not purely in USD. That is one of the reasons the proposed unlock is specified in RSR terms. If the budget were instead defined only in USD terms, then a lower RSR price would imply unlocking more RSR to fund the same USD amount. That feels like the wrong direction: it would mean more token dilution precisely when the token is weaker.
By setting a maximum unlock in RSR terms, the dilution side of the equation is bounded. 3B RSR is 3B RSR regardless of price. If the RSR price is higher when the milestone is reached, the USD value of that allocation is higher, but the token-denominated dilution is not larger than what was proposed. If the RSR price is lower, the framework does not automatically increase the number of tokens unlocked.
This also matters for incentives. The team and ecosystem are strongly aligned toward RSR being worth as much as possible by the time any milestone is reached. A higher RSR price means any unlocked RSR can fund more growth with less actual token usage over time. A lower RSR price makes the same RSR budget less effective. So the incentive is not to reach the milestone with a low token price; it is the opposite.
That said, I agree with the underlying point that if 3B RSR represents a much larger USD amount by the time Milestone 1 is reached, the team should be especially clear about how much is actually needed, how much is actually used, and what results that spending is expected to produce. Unlocking should be treated as authorization and maximum capacity, not an obligation to spend the full amount.
Last, as Nevin pointed out previously CC treasury is not 20B →
It’s been stated in this thread that there’s an existing unlocked RSR treasury of 20b tokens. That’s not true. That’s the number of tokens that have unlocked in the treasury category since October 2020, five years ago. A good portion of those tokens have been used along the way to get us to where we are today. [RFC] RSR Health: Request For Comments - #63 by nevin.freeman