What Is Reserve Rights (RSR)?

Reserve Rights is a dual-token stablecoin platform that was launched in May 2019 following a successful initial exchange offering (IEO) on the Huobi Prime platform.

Reserve Rights’ dual token setup includes a stablecoin known as the Reserve stablecoin (RSV) — which is backed by a basket of assets managed by smart contracts. The second token is the Reserve Rights token (RSR), which is used to keep the RSV stable at its $1.00 price target through a system of arbitrage opportunities.

Unlike RSV, the Reserve Rights (RSR) token is volatile, and its main purpose is to help maintain the stability of RSV. It can also be used to vote on governance proposals — helping holders shape the future of the Reserve Rights ecosystem.

In the later stages of the project, Reserve Rights plans to back the Reserve stablecoin by an increasingly diverse basket of assets, and eventually move it away from the U.S. dollar peg — instead creating an alternative reserve asset where RSV tokens instead represent fractional ownership of the collateral pool.

Who Are the Founders of Reserve Rights?

Reserve Rights was co-founded by Nevin Freeman and Matt Elder. Freeman is Reserve's CEO and a seasoned entrepreneur. He describes his life goal as "solving the coordination problems that are stopping humanity from achieving its potential."

Matt Elder, on the other hand, is an experienced engineer who previously worked for Google and Quixey, and now works to oversee the architecture of the Reserve protocol implementation as the project’s CTO.

Since its launch in 2019, the Reserve team has grown considerably, and now includes more than two dozen individuals, which includes engineers, developers, and legal and compliance staff — all unified under the shared ambition to position Reserve as an open, massively scalable stablecoin that promotes economic prosperity.

What Makes Reserve Rights Unique?

Unlike other stablecoins that are typically backed by U.S. dollars (USD) held in reserve in a bank account controlled by the stablecoin issuer or a trusted custodian, Reserve stablecoins are backed by a basket of cryptocurrencies managed by smart contracts.

This basket initially consists of Ethereum stablecoin assets, including USD Coin (USDC), True USD (TUSD) and Paxos (PAX), but there are plans to later transition to a more diverse basket, which might eventually include fiat currencies, securities, commodities and complex asset types, like synthetics and derivatives.

Arguably Reserve's major defining feature is its Reserve Rights token, which is minted and sold when the RSV stablecoin loses its peg with the U.S. dollar. The funds generated by selling RSR tokens are used to replenish the RSV collateral pool, whereas when RSV is valued at above $1, the additional collateral will be used to purchase and burn RSR from the secondary market, driving down the supply.