AMA with Thomas Mattimore, Head of Platform at Reserve — 31.10.2023
This article is a summary of the AMA between the Reserve Community and Thomas Mattimore, Head of Platform at Reserve Telegram Group, on October 31 2023.
Community question 1 — With how many companies is Reserve working right now outside of crypto for an RWA Plan?
Thomas | Reserve
Candidly hard to give a number here because the Core Team is continuously having conversations with most groups in defi. Most RWA providers have reached out to us actually, but generally it all seems like great collateral for yield bearing stablecoins.
If I had to guess, it’ll be all treasuries + undercollateralized loans for the next couple years before we see anything more exotic
Community
What would you consider as exotic? to tack on to this before moving on to the next one
Thomas | Reserve
real estate, stonks, etc
Community question 2 — Dont know if you know…
Will the Reserve/BFF Creditcard start as a globally useable and offered card … so that we in the EU can order one too ? Or will everybody need a BFF bankaccount to use the Reserve credit card -> only in BFF countries?
Thomas | Reserve
I’m going to punt on BFF questions if you all don’t mind. Gabo and the team have a great release plan that I don’t want to bungle with any leaks 🙂
I’m excited for the products they are getting ready to launch though and excited to be a user.
Community question 3 — The Layer3 quest was a fantastic way to promote the ease of creation of Rtokens and to promote knowledge of the Reserve ecosystem in general. What other methods are currently in the works to promote the Reserve ecosystem?
Thomas | Reserve
Layer3 was really cool! its been exciting to see 1) so many holders of hyusd and 2) so many deployers of new RTokens. It was a great learning as the first two onchain quests launched that help educate and show people how to actually do things.
Think there’s lots of possibility there let’s see… there’s a pretty cool one that has been chatted about for awhile and public in register but the other team is holding off on announcing for a bit.
Think the Core Team and everyone in the community has really been enjoying the UX of the protocol on Base. Think there’s a ton of possibilty there along with great teams to partner with.
I’m limited from discussing any partnerships that are in flight but not public for a variety of reasons, but mostly because, the Reserve Protocol is a platform and other people launch products on it, and its their right to control their marketing + comms plans. Don’t want to burn trust 🙂
Community question 4 — Question on a hot and vital topic for the project.
Currently over 49b RSR are locked in the Slow Wallet. Recently Nevin suggested that the team was preparing a communication on this topic. In general, since I noticed that it is an aspect that understandably distances possible deployers or investors: is it possible to have a clear update on the strategy that Reserve intends to pursue with this resource? Having a clear statement of intent to refer skeptical users to in the future can be helpful — in addition to the single paragraph that is currently dedicated to the Slow Wallet on the current website (paragraph that by the way is a sort of copy-paste of the previous version of the website).
Side note:
In general, in view of a possible return of more trust in the industry — I think Reserve should equip itself with a more organic and transparent approach. This does not mean playing naively with open cards but becoming a pillar of reliability. A brand known for its transparency and synonymous with security for capital and investors. In this sense, I suggest a more open and maybe even smart approach to the outside when presenting topics that clearly can generate FUD. Often these are blatantly unfounded rants that affect the communicative spaces where Reserve is unclear or “silent” for a while. Repetitia iuvant.
If it is possible to fill these gaps where there is a lack of communication, it is better.
Thomas | Reserve
In general, in view of a possible return of more trust in the industry — I think Reserve should equip itself with a more organic and transparent approach. This does not mean playing naively with open cards but becoming a pillar of reliability. A brand known for its transparency and synonymous with security for capital and investors. In this sense, I suggest a more open and maybe even smart approach to the outside when presenting topics that clearly can generate FUD. Often these are blatantly unfounded rants that affect the communicative spaces where Reserve is unclear or “silent” for a while. Repetitia iuvant.
If it is possible to fill these gaps where there is a lack of communication, it is better.
That’s definitely the goal and its a big focus of how we communicate. the core team’s goal generally is to communicate transparently and straight forwardly. obviously, there are some industry limitations that prevent us doing it as clearly as we would like all the time.
The goal for the tokens in the slow wallet is to use them to help the ecosystem. ideally, over time we can come up with a framework to make the process more transparent and community driven. but it will likely be iterative to get there!
Can confirm what Nevin suggested — we are prepping a communication on the Slow Wallet but all I can share right now!
Community question 5 — Do you think the SBF trial is harming trust or is it slowly coming back?
Thomas | Reserve
Think it definitely harmed trust last year.
It was really odd because in a way, it proved the case for defi generally, and for yield bearing rtokens specifically! onchain proof of reserves where you see the sources of yield is better than a blackbox of funds that could get spent on stadium sponsorships without you knowing about it,
But that being said, think that trust in defi and crypto more broadly is slowly creeping back. Some of the biggest critics continue to have their arguments debunked in congressional hearings, live and recorded for everyone to see.
I realize thats a US centric view, but its where I live ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Community
Well whether we like it or not whatever the US does has massive effects on everything else, so it’s a good point no matter what
Thomas | Reserve
Yea — realistically its important to have clear guidelines, rules, and regs in the US because even though its not where crypto is *actually* the most useful right now, its where the largest pot of money is (and lots of engineers, investors, etc).
Community question 6 — Will Thomas be dressing as a ghost for the #ama ?Or a goolie ?
We demand to know this as investors
Thomas | Reserve
I have this painted on my face right now https://x.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1719373400760582255
Community question 7 — Now back to the boring stuff no one asked for:
Hey Thomas, what are your thoughts on the long withdrawal delay on Base regarding potential collateral defaults and maybe knock on rsr effects. If collateral is mostly bridged from L1 and one experieces default on Base, could you imagine different or exagerrated issues? Maybe difficulty switching to emergency collateral because of liquidity etc? #AMA
Thomas | Reserve
That’s definitely a danger for any collateral tokens that are bridged from L1s.
Generally the whole L2 thing is funky, and its important to remember that its different for if an RToken is native to an L1 or L2, and if the collateral is native to the L1 or L2. We’ve been playing around with some clever ideas for rtokens to transport yield to L2s from L1s. For instance, could do something clever where:
1. L1 Rtoken deployed with L1 collateral.
2. All yield is sent as the RToken to the Bridge + a Vault on L2 (via revenue 😵
3. If people bridge the Rtoken to L2 and stake it in the Vault then they can get the yield.
4. If there are other reasons to use the RToken on the L2 than the RTokens in the Vault will get yield that is higher than the underlying yield (similar to frxETH)
It’ss a rough idea right now but anyone could actually launch this today with reserve protocol as is and by cloning a vault on L2. Only trick is confirming things work with the bridge. Could do it with sDAI and Flux and other RWA type collaterals and boom, you’ve got a pretty cool product.
Any rtokens in the Base Curve pool for instance, would not get the yield. So if 50% of the tokens are bridged and are in the curve pool, and the other 50% are in the vault, then the yield in the vault would be 2x the underlying yield!
Community question 8 — From Reserve’s point of view, is it beneficial or detrimental for an RToken deployer to state that their RToken is censorship-resistant? Which of the two is Reserve’s preference if there is one?
Thomas | Reserve
hmmm it just is 🙂
Its really up to the individual deployer on how they want to market it. but the property of the rtokens is that they *are* censorship resistant, by design, and can only be changed by governance and temporarily paused by certain roles.
I could understand why some people might want to emphasize as a part of the marketing, but I could see why other rtoken deployers leave that out of messaging for other things that they deem more important. Could even see a deployer choosing to emphasize it at different times in an RToken’s lifecycle!
Community question 9 — What’s the status of the $20M investment into Curve in order to incentivize the pools? It seems like TVL is roughly the same since that investment was made. Is all of that 20m invested and incentivized to the pools already?
Thomas | Reserve
I agree! we see more and more teams moving this way in defi. Compound V3 is actually a platofrm as well
- Its not fully deployed yet.
- There is a relationship between the amount of TVL that can be incentivized and the price of CRV. CRV and crypto boardly took a bit of a downturn since then, so not surprising that its taking more and more CRV to incentivize similar TVL levels. But we’re always optimizing our voting to see what works best.
That relationship is because of the incentives APY being distributed to LPs in Curve Pools as CRV. Higher CRV price = higher apy (number of CRV is contrained).
Community question 10— Not sure if this has been discussed/answered before. How does Reserve think about the Howey test applied to yield-bearing RTokens? If the holders expect profits from the yield and the deployer is promoting the RToken’s yield, do you think the RToken can be classified as a security?
Thomas | Reserve
IA(m)N(ot)AL(awyer) 🙂
Generally the biggest way to avoid being a security is to avoid having securities in the basket. typically, the investment also needs to have returns that come from the efforts of others (who are paid to generate that yield). in this case, the yield for the rtoken appreciation comes from defi yields. But this is in no way a legal argument nor should it be taken as legal advice.
I do have to run for a call but will check back in here if you want to drop more questions.
Thanks for having me rigatonis and thanks for hosting!
