Reserve Protocol Community AMA #3 – Reserve Currency
Community
Since everything seems to be waiting on the app being “finished and polished” before full Venezuela release phase…I would be interested to know what changes have been made to the app recently (December through February) that improve it.
Nevin Freeman (CEO of Reserve Protocol)
Reasonable question.
We have two separate threads of app upgrading. One is for small changes to the existing app. The changes that have been made have not been user-facing, but rather have been for our back office team to allow them to handle more and more users. We do have some user-facing changes we may get to, but they are low priority.
At the same time, we are architecting a new version from the ground up that will have many more features. This is a big overhaul and will take some time. We’re still working out the details of how it will work, and we are quite excited. It’s what I’m working on now with several other team members.
As I’ve mentioned before I don’t want to make promises we can’t keep so I don’t want to give a deadline or state exactly which features it will include yet. Upon launching this new product is when we anticipate adding other countries and beginning to focus more on scaling.
As for the concern about whether we are being too perfectionist, we’re trying hard not to be. We’re going to stay in the MVP mindset for the launch of this new platform, so even though it will have more new features, there will still be a long list of things we have thought of to add which won’t be present on day 1. Better to ship as soon as we can and develop over time!
Charlie Smith (Head of Business Development of Reserve Protocol)
Our overall thesis is that crypto is still in its infancy in terms of its adoption as real money. We launched our app in Venezuela to test demand for a stablecoin as a store of value and medium of exchange in the sort of market where we expect demand to be greatest.
We’ve received strong signals from our users there that there is significant demand for a product that enables people to seamlessly move between fiat and a dollar backed stablecoin in a decentralized manner.
We’re working now on our next big product, which will double down on that use-case, but with more global appeal outside of Venezuela.
Community
Where are we with the small app upgrade which is focused on scaling? Did we get closer to beta testing phase?
Nevin Freeman (CEO of Reserve Protocol)
Some small changes for scalability have been made, allowing us to handle our current userbase. Our intention is for the next big upgrade to allow for MUCH more scaling.
We turned off ads a while ago so that the userbase wouldn’t grow beyond what we could handle.
Community
Are we still waiting for mainnet to start actively promoting Reserve app in Venezuela?
Nevin Freeman (CEO of Reserve Protocol)
Not waiting for mainnet. Waiting for next major version of user application. Can do lots of scaling and promotion prior to next protocol upgrade.
Community
What kind of volume are we talking about if we see adoption?
Charlie Smith (Head of Business Development of Reserve Protocol)
There’s a large addressable market here. Local Bitcoin volume is huge and that’s with a very intimidating UX that appeals to a pretty narrow user profile:
Community
What is the PayPal connection and how it works that users buy crypto via PayPal. How is this possible? For how long? In how many countries?
Matthew Gertler (General Counsel of Reserve Protocol)
Can’t share the secret sauce, but it depends on certain operational components that we discovered in our R&D.
The only country is Venezuela at the moment, but that’s a Reserve decision not a PayPal one. How long is a question that I can’t really answer.
Community
Are you also cooperating with PayPal to set this new system version up? How incremental are the PayPal guys?
Nevin Freeman (CEO of Reserve Protocol)
No. I’d like to clear this up: We don’t have any partnership with PayPal at the moment.
We may in the future, but not for now. We just have a compliant way of using PayPal as a payment mechanism at our current scale, and we will work to support it at all scales as we grow.
Charlie Smith (Head of Business Development of Reserve Protocol)
However, we’ve strategized a bunch with them and frequently reference some of the tactics/strategies they employed to grow.
Community
Will RSV be used as a way to pay for online goods and services and if so how is the purchaser protected? PayPal plays the part of the intermediary for resolving disputes .
Matthew Gertler (General Counsel of Reserve Protocol)
I expect that in the future RSV can be used to pay for such things. I would expect the platform that offers the goods/services to sell would provide consumer protection.
Community
Is there 10k RSV “floating around” off chain or more?
Nevin Freeman (CEO of Reserve Protocol)
There are a bit under 10k held by users of the app. Velocity is always really high at the beginning with a payment solution. This is something Thiel taught us in our first meeting. He explained that at the start of PayPal, users would deposit money, send it, and the recipient would take it out quickly, since they didn’t understand or trust PayPal yet.
Over time, people learn to trust, and start holding money there. This is the trend we are observing with initial users. The amount they are willing to hold is going up, but it takes time. I’m pleased with the trajectory so far. It’s actually been easier to build trust than I had thought it would be — due in large part to very solid work done by many different Reserve team members that I had nothing to do with; the graphics, intro text, customer support on WhatsApp, and the operators themselves.
Community
Are the people using the app new to crypto in general, or do they seem to have some previous experience with it?
Nevin Freeman (CEO of Reserve Protocol)
Mostly brand new to it. That’s part of why we had the first version not require any crypto interaction at all. We think we have a way for the next version to be almost as easy while being a whole lot more powerful at the same time. The engineering team has been working out the details on that system over the past week or two.
Community
How long will the app stay restricted for download ? Would love to poke around the app from North America.
Nevin Freeman (CEO of Reserve Protocol)
We haven’t decided for sure, but we are strongly considering this next version of the platform being open in many more places from the beginning. As I mentioned above, development will take some time, so we aren’t super close to that moment yet. But we are quite hungry for it!
Published at Thu, 13 Feb 2020 07:35:09 +0000
