May i ask why did the journey to mainnet take

so so long?

like since 2019 to 2022?

what happened in 2019-2021?

was it less productive back then? did the vision change?

Any og members here since 2019 to answer that? Thanks

Up to recently the Reserve team decided to put the majority of their efforts in creating what we call "RPay", which is the platform where Reserve stablecoins actually get used in the real economy (paying for groceries, bills, concerts, restaurants, etc). There was such a high need for that solution (especially in Venezuela) that it made sense to the team to focus on that area first. There were talks of mainnet back then, and we did sometimes share vague estimations (e.g. "We think we'll be launching mainnet this year"), but the priority always shifted back to RPay. You can see how that prioritization paid off by looking at the Reserve app adoption numbers - it has more than 600,000 normal everyday people using cryptocurrency to pay for real goods, and the app can be used at ~23,000 merchants as a means of payments; a lot of these merchants even pay their employees directly with Reserve. At this point a majority of the focus goes into launching mainnet, and that just wasn't the case up to recently (for the reasons mentioned above). Besides that, the reason it takes a long time to develop the protocol is because it's just a really complex piece of code. For context, when MakerDAO went from their V1 to V2 of their protocol, it took them 2 years of development (the Reserve protocol code has a similar amount of complexity)

That’s a fair explanation. May I ask out of the 200 employees rsr have, how many would be allocated for Venezuelan operations ? The concern I have is that investing in rsr would just be like investing in a Venezuelan fintech company Example, dash was doing lot of marketing in Venezuela but I’m not sure if it’s sustainable. I understand that developing a protocol takes time. But I’m also worried that the mainnet would just be like another project offering 10% apy on rsv. Will there be an ecosystem built on top of reserve? (Other projects building on reserve) Or will the focus just be on rpay in Venezuela, Argentina / affected hyperinflation countries . I am still concerned on the sustainability of RSR in generating revenue and feeding 200+ employees which I do not see any revenue streams at the moment . (Future staking and transaction fees seems alright but most are in theory) Just like Luna relying on additional investor funding on anchor as I knew it was not sustainable at all. Thanks 🙏

Currently, 73 team members are allocated for purely operations in Latam (not just Venezuela) - this means support for the Reserve app (and excludes things like Latam business development). When you buy RSR you are not investing in the company, (ideally) you're speculating on the profitability of the token through staking in the future. I understand what you're saying, though, but even if you would be invested in the Reserve company, it would be much different than investing in a Venezuelan fintech. I believe investing rounds to be much larger for US based companies, attracting talent is probably easier, etc. I think entrepreneurship overall is way more difficult in Venezuela than in the US. Regarding Dash, you're saying that "they're doing a lot of marketing in Venezuela, but I don't think it's sustainable". What don't you think is sustainable? I personally think the reason Dash didn't succeed is because they offered a volatile currency to be used as money in the real economy. We have a couple of old Dash employees who told us that merchants got burned by accepting Dash, and then holding onto it after it crashed. Regarding to the mainnet launch, our intention is definitely to hook Reserve stablecoins (RTokens) into the DeFi ecosystem (and probably wider too) - in some cases it just makes a lot of sense to use the types of RTokens that the protocol can produce (e.g. a stablecoin that earns passive yield without staking or lockups). This may include purely yield farming tactics (if it makes sense), but will probably go further. But important to keep in mind is that RTokens will be integrated into the Reserve app (so there will some kind of merge between the protocol and RPay). The intention is for some kind of ecosystem to be built on top of the Reserve Protocol, indeed. What exactly that looks like I'm not sure yet - it might only include integrations with RTokens on different protocols. I can't really help you much further with your revenue question than what I've said before. It's very typical (if not always the case) for startups to work on investor capital initially and eventually rely more and more on new revenue streams. But I'm not here to convince you, I recommend being as skeptical as possible :-)

Thank you sinatra for your detailed explanation. this itself is pretty rare to get in 99% crypto projects . i agree with your point on Dash. Reserve really is something else, perhaps a project that is actually meaningful. I have invested a little on rsr, but will have to evaluate further upon mainnet launch. Really excited to see if it can be pulled off. Hope it doesn't disappoint. Cheers and have a nice weekend 😊😊👍

I'd add, the eventual aim is to get to a stable currency, or stable currencies, that the world can use for decades to come. Stablecoins that are fully collaterised, backed by a wide range of tokenized assets, and useful in a variety of scenarios (treasuries, payment, branded money for corporations?) The stablecoin platform is the way we will do it, by allowing RTokens to be built by anyone, and an evolutionary process discovering the most robust baskets and ways of governance. RPay and RSV is that being put into practice in LATAM (and eventually broader, we hope). Crypto, defi, and the real world need this form of stablecoin, a tool which is as immune as possible from inflation, political interference, the rise and fall of empires at the cost of citizen's wellbeing. We saw what happened recently when an algo coin tried to hype it's way into that position - here's our CEO talking about it back in 2019: https://twitter.com/ReserveCommmune/status/1260479326065176576 The things I've talked to above, they're big claims and will take a lot of work to achieve. They're not things you can build overnight, and that's why it's a step by step process along the way. A strong, secure protocol, and RPay/RSV being the first practical example of it.

I understand that reserve is building something huge, something really meaningful and it could change lives, if not, the world. But as an investor, profitability, revenue, sustainability and the balance sheet is something to look out for as well which i'm concerned. Most crypto projects promise the moon and stars but fail because its just not sustainable. Im super excited for reserve and I do wish reserve the best as it deserves to be!😊👍

Absolutely, for that angle, keeping an eye on RToken m-caps (leading to yield for stakers) is where to be looking, once the protocol is launched and live

Excited to see it launch and will re-evaluate further upon mainnet. Cheers!