RSR is the ticket (part one) - a conviction-weighted ambassador rewards program

Ideas & suggestions
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From Nevin’s recent video a few items caught my ear: “Current materials and site don’t explain well” and “reach the right audience, get conversions” and “earn attention.”

Also traditional paid shills have large distribution but very low conversion. They lack authenticity. You can spot them miles away.

There are many ideas to tackle this. Here is one:

Consider a conviction-weighted ambassador rewards program: a daily $500 RSR pool distributed among engagooors using a rank-weighted curve. “Daily RSR airdrop” for short. Fixed budget: $15,000 monthly.

Conviction and contribution boosters determine each participant’s placement on the curve:

  • 0 for ai slop poasters

  • 2x boost for creating high commentary discussions (“HCD”)

  • 10x boost on HCD if you stake $10 of RSR on that DTF

  • 20x boost on HCD if you hold $20 of that DTF in your wallet

  • 100x boost on HCD for holding positions for 180+ days

On an XY axis -

  • Y is RSR staking on DTF or DTF depth in wallet.

  • X is # of comments or referrals clicked on.

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Creates a daily competition.

Delightful and slick public leaderboard helps participants see how their work ranks.

Add monthly RSR staker community picked winner for bonus pool. They can vote via Snapshot or similar.

Measurable metrics:

  • # of non-AI slop comments

  • Referral conversions (e.g. to learn about the DTF value prop, to complete quests, to mint DTFs, etc.)

Target competent, values-aligned talent on each platform (its a lot of recruiting work, someone’s full time job):

  • Reddit - best place for deeper felt pain points

  • 𝕏 - best place for breaking news and current pain points

  • YouTube - largest cross-Asia video platform.

  • Douyin - China’s TikTok

  • TikTok - dominant across Southeast Asia

Recruit one pseudo-celeb leader (with a “special” deal) that will provide halo effect attracting like-minded creators. Reserve’s version of Chainlink God. Machinima had PewDiePie the then largest YouTube gamer in the world, which attracted the other 39,999 gamers wanting to be in our network.

In short:

  • Hook: “Daily RSR airdrop” is the awareness megafone, attract participation.

  • Ignition: High commentary discussions (HCD) and referrals spread DTF understanding.

  • Gravity: Conviction weighting rewards longer-term commitment, higher quality education.

  • Integrity: Transparent scoring and a public leaderboard builds competition and trust.

  • Scale: Email capture creates a Reserve owned network for repeatable activation.

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How a program like this could fail:

  • It’s the manager’s part-time responsibility, they lack sales/recruiting skills or they do not believe in it.

  • Analytics and attribution not instrumented and reviewed often

  • The user experience creates more friction than market alternatives.

  • Communication becomes infrequent or inconsistent.

  • Broader more passive vlRSR community does not get to play a role. Not vested.

What distinguishes RSR is the ticket from past conversations on affiliate and ambassador programs:

  • Rewards increase with the poaster’s economic commitment to stRSR and, more heavily, DTFs.

  • Poasters with capital at stake bring authentic conviction and independent creativity that career paid shills are unlikely to go the extra mile for.

  • Each platform operates as a distinct swimlane and format (𝕏, reddit, Douyin, etc.). Measure conversions, optimize winners, and kill underperformers.

At its core, this is a conviction-weighted ambassador rewards program with affiliate mechanics. It rewards valuable discussion and attributed actions, then multiplies rewards based on staking, ownership, and holding duration.

It draws inspiration from EtherFi Cash’s tiered model. Affiliates share a link and earn increasing commissions when referrals activate Cash and spend at least $100. Higher tiers require more active users.

It also borrows from Polymarket’s broader incentive system, which combines several affiliate programs and has driven market leading results: The Incentive Full Stack

More broadly…

Just because AI takes off, doesn’t mean Reserve DTFs ride the wave. There will be many ways to express the AI trade. The solutions with an “edge” will endure and thrive. Reserve was 1st to the stablecoin-as-a-service platform (there are now many, doing reasonably well) and early to the stablecoin boom, yet did not entrench and ride.

Fintech is being commoditized. Stablecoins, neobanks, wallets, index products. AI is accelerating this.

What can be Reserve’s edge? Superior distribution is an edge for sure, but if we don’t have it then it requires creativity on building it, likely internet native, likely something to do with community.

EtherFi and Polymarket have done this successfully because they have nourished their respective customer communities. There was no gatekeeper to give them distribution in their PMF building days. Other communities have done it well too: see Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Hyperliquid. Communities cannot be commoditized, only nourished or killed.

RSR is the ticket?
Always has been (but only if nourished).

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Comments, critique or questions welcomed.

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Reserve - State of Things 2026-08-26
Reserve - State of Things 2026-08-12
2

Hey @0xJMG, these are some very interesting ideas shared here and in part 2; perhaps it would be a good idea to host a quick call with delegates, and other community members to discuss them more broadly.

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RSR is the ticket (part two) - growing Reserve’s edge

Here is the 2nd part of that idea that creates a second compounding and feeder growth loop above the ambassador program.

South Korean crypto natives use Upbit and Bithumb.

Offshore Mandarin-speaking crypto natives use Binance, OKX, Gate, MEXC, Bitget, KuCoin, and HTX.

RSR is listed across all these exchanges.

The AI DTFs may face securities classification concerns, limiting near-term CEX listings and distribution.

Instead, use CEX Earn campaigns to distribute RSR and introduce Reserve DTFs.

Users unlock increasing rewards by:

  • Vote-locking RSR for 90 days: 2x boost

  • vlRSR completing the Reserve DTF education series: 4x boost

  • vlRSR holding a DTF for 90 days: 10x boost

  • vlRSR holding a DTF for 180 days: 20x boost

  • vlRSR joining the “RSR Is the Ticket” ambassador program: up to 100x boost

These incentive layers create a second compounding and feeder growth loop above the ambassador program.

Success means retaining more than 20% of participants after 180 days by most industry benchmarks. However I believe if well executed you can achieve 30 to 40% retention. Those participants should understand DTFs, hold them, and introduce others. Analytics instrumentation is necessary to measure the right things.

Use incoming data to adjust incentives toward specific outcomes.

These numbers are placeholders. Model final rewards through sensitivity analysis. Some weighting may be required on boosters.

Most of those exchanges also operate token launchpads, with wallet histories verifiable onchain. Their participants are cutting-edge crypto users with histories of joining TGEs.

Target these users through coordinated, surround-sound marketing/awareness campaigns.

Grow the RSR family, then grow DTFs. Strengthen Reserve’s edge.

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@Sixty thanks for your post. I’d be up for joining/supporting a call if there were interest from a few of @nevin.freeman @starl3xx @blue @ham @0xd15co @R72 @Raphael_Anode or others. Just let me know.

I went ahead and consolidated the Part 2 on this post (in comment above) so folks have a one-stop shop reference for the idea set now or sometime in the future as the winds change.

Couple of observations in recent days worth adding here:

Yesterday Bitwise announced their Automated Token Portfolios (ATPs), which was a reminder of all the competition coming for onchain indexes, just as weve already seen a flood in tokenized stocks. Within a few years many flavors will die and audiences will consolidate around the winners. I dont know what the Bitwise ATP distribution strategy is, but I do know they do not have something Reserve does: a token for which to coordinate decentralized communities. That’s no silver bullet, there are many ways to do it wrong, but this is a fundamental strength/weakness for Reserve depending on how you want to look at it. Since folks here want to win, it behooves us to try to lean in to the strengths of what RSR can enable.

Other thing is in the recennt NARR unlocking conversation I dont recall if it was @ham or @Braden that called out RSR stakers on index DTFs are not really providing anything in exchange for their yield. Sure they stake for the free money, but they arent providing safety backstops or obligated to create awareness for DTFs. Thats a problem imo. I’ve heard Nevin receive from community members on several occasions “we love DTFs but we dont hold any or dont tell our friends”, thats a massive problem.

Everyone likes to say nice things about the product until you put a buy button on it and ask them why they arent participating. And for the ones that are participating, owning and sharing, thats where the most valuable truths emerge.

This leads me to how the ‘RSR is the ticket’ idea could be integrated into the vlRSR staker workflow, to earn conviction weighted yield boosts for providing high commentary discussions across X, Reddit, Youtube, etc. and potetially through a referral program.

Conviction weighted in my mind means, creating conversations and attributable referrals that weigh more based on how much DTFs and vlRSR are in your wallet, illustrated in this chart:

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As I have hinted and tried to articulate many times (somewhat unsuccessfully it seems), its an imperative that Reserve lean into and noursih the strengths available to a project with a token and commiunity and especially into an INTERNET NATIVE GROWTH LOOP with no middlemen gatekeepers.

Lastly, in case this was not obvious in my post (someone asked me), the precise numbers around 20x, 100x, etc are placeholders to illustrate the shape of a potential program. Programs like this won’t be voluntarily led by the community, it must have ABC Labs support and funding.

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5

hey James,

these are good ideas and initiatives… and growing organically from the current user base could be a solid move.

On the other hand, idk how many reserve community people have a large follower base. The flipside is that KOL with real follower base would be greedy and may not want to promote anything for little money regardless of the quality of the product.

In any case, this program would tend to fall under a marketing initiative, the way i see it… fine, I do think that marketing, product distribution and awareness are important and much needed. I recall Nevin mentioned they were concerned about ads in the US, so it seems to be a can of worms… or maybe not, I do see a lot of crypto / defi ads, but perhaps those come from projects that are not US based.

what is a little confusing to me, RSR token, as i see it, is a claim on the protocol future fee revenue. fine, but today people use it to harvest the dtf… in a way, the other way around could be more interesting, ie, the dtf capital one has would make one eligible for more rsr rewards…

i guess what i am trying to get at is that spending rsr for marketing is a good iniciative, but once it is gone, crypto degens would tend to sell the rsr and leave… wouldn´t it be better if rsr was used to attract sticky capital? so that people bought dtfs and didnt sell rsr thinking it would be worth a larger claim in the future if tvl grows.

the other angle is Sky as a parallel.

Sky provides infra… issues USDS and sets a base rate.

Independent agents like spark grove and others borrow that capital, run a specific strategy, and keep the spread. Spark does liquidity and distribution. Grove does institutional credit.

Reserve could do something similar with DTFs. Instead of paying RSR to KOLs for posts, use RSR (or DTF fee share) to stand up a small set of boutique managers with distinct strategies. Then market the one that actually compounds. The product that outperforms becomes the ad.

That’s how you get sticky capital. People stay because the dtf is doing the job, not because they got paid to talk about it.

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As I am not a marketing expert, am weary of incentives, but also know narratives are in the end what can push a project to the front, I don’t have a strong opinion on this one..

I know James puts a lot of time into the art of messaging and marketing, so in that sense would give this plan a real chance :+1:

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It’s a good idea on how to get marketing to actually interact with the ecosystem.

‘Pseudo-celeb’ that comes to mind is Caleb Hammer and his Financial Audit. Would be better to go this route after the Clarity act and perhaps some more S&P 500 like stocks as it is a finance show.

However, as he’s currently advertising energy drinks and stuff, this is a much better fit. Lots of his guests buy dumb individual stocks and a hook can easily be inserted - just use Reserve and buy an Index, I use it too! It’s tradable 24/7 so you can get your money even on Sundays!

The show is centered around people trying to get financial advice on how to save money/fix their finances. So the savings can easily go into DTFs. Though, a low risk DTF would be best appropriate for most savings such as USD3. But he can hook without that as well “If you’re buying individual stocks, just buy an index instead, you can use Reserve”. Etc.

Averages I believe 1-2 million views per episode. Most viewed one is 6.5 million.

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Thanks for sharing your ideas here, James!

We all agree that active participation, ownership, and commitment should be rewarded somehow.

Commitment and ownership: This could easily be proven by locking vlRSR for longer periods. Many new Index DTFs already use the same vlRSR token anyway. Make it possible to lock for longer than 1 week and boost rewards accordingly. That ties directly into what you’ve noticed here:

I unstaked my RSR from eUSD to vote-lock on the new AI DTFs and still get roughly 30% for taking basically zero risk, whereas I’d only get roughly 6% for providing fallback collateral on eUSD. Vote-lock on an Index DTF with a 1-week unlock: minimum rewards. Vote-lock for 6 months? That’s conviction - you should be rewarded accordingly. No need for content creation for this type of reward, and we wouldn’t even need to weight votes differently. Just distribute rewards based on lock duration.

Affiliate program: Pure referrals and conversions are probably easier to track initially than soft metrics like discussion quality or reach on X. So I’d focus on the low-hanging fruit first. Let people sign up, create referral links, and get paid in RSR when someone follows the link and visits a DTF page, mints a DTF, or connects their wallet to the Reserve app. It has to be tied to a specific action. Airdrop a small bag on signup in exchange for a longer lock, and boost rewards the longer those rewards stay locked.

1 Like
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This is true. Probably better to track it this way. When I was 13-14 I used websites like microworkers.com to fabricate engagement, there were some for likes etc. so it’s entirely possible if there’s a financial incentive to fabricate engagement. Tracking actual delivery would be the safer way to get more $ per mint value.

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In case you are looking into affiliate attribution tracking @starl3xx consider these two options:

Not precisely the same.
Polymarket started with Dub, then built their own (and now run both with different goals simultaneously).