More Than $150,000 of RSR Has Now Been Burned on Reserve Protocol

Reserve Protocol Will Have AI Equity DTFs This Summer

Reserve Protocol DTFs are like ETFs, but on-chain, and tradeable without barriers 24/7. The first AI DTF is expected in June.

AI really is the focus of… basically everyone. But right now, it is hard to invest in the narrative, unless you have a broker to buy specific company shares or can buy specific, ringfenced ETFs in certain countries.

That may all change in the next month or two, with ABC Labs planning to launch a series of AI-themed equity DTFs (Decentralized Token Folios) this summer, built on tokenized US stocks and aimed at non-US, crypto investors who cannot access the same exposure through traditional brokerage channels.

The AI DTFs will focus on different segments (for example, DRAM, photonics, power), and ABC Labs may also offer a wider ‘AI infrastructure DTF’ which captures exposure across the full stack.

DTFs are like ETFs, but on-chain, and tradeable without barriers 24/7. With a range of tokenized AI stocks arriving in June, the first AI DTF is expected a few days after. Instead of buying individual tokenized stocks, buy the index and capture the segment of the industry you are most bullish on.

DTFs can be built and minted using the Reserve Protocol, at https://app.reserve.org.

On the AI front, Reserve cited Situational Awareness, a private, major AI thesis hedge fund, that has $13.6 billion in assets under management.

The recent launch of DRAM is also a recent example, which quickly became a $9 billion ETF.

With ETFs beginning to crop up around the AI industry, it is inevitable their on-chain equivalent - DTFs - will arrive.

But, as Reserve Protocol pointed out on Twitter, “$DRAM is a US-listed ETF, so you can only buy it in countries that are plugged into the US brokerage network. Fund access has progressed from private to public, but still leaves much of the world out.

“We can do better. By creating funds on-chain with tokenized US stocks that are backed 1:1 with underlying equities and accessible outside of the US, we can extend access to most of the globe. That’s what we’re cooking right now, alongside the leading tokenizer of US equities.

“Stay tuned for globally accessible AI supply chain funds in the coming weeks, freely accessible in about 145 countries to about 6 billion people.

“If you are in the trenches on this trade, you can guess which vertical we’ll lead with.”

Our guess on the vertical is photonics, but we will see. Whichever the vertical is, that is likely our first glimpse of the logo up above.

The tokenized US stocks used in the DTFs will be backed 1:1 with underlying equities and may be accessible in as many as 145 countries, with a population of six billion people.

Sources: Telegram, Reserve Forum, Twitter

MATTHEW

MAY 22, 2026

May 2026: Reserve Protocol RSR Burn is 9.5M RSR

For May 2026, 9.5M RSR was burned, as noted in the Reserve Telegram channel. The actual burn took place on May 21, 2026.

Every month, a portion of the RSR supply is burned, a product of the fees primarily generated by the minting and holding of Index DTFs.

For May 2026, 9,493,217 RSR was burned, as noted in the Reserve Telegram channel and inspectable on-chain. The actual burn took place on May 21, 2026.

Each month, the USD accrued in fees is used to market-buy RSR, before being sent to the furnace / the NULL address.

As Index DTFs grow in size, the burn is expected to accelerate. As of May 2026, 85,556,392 RSR has been burned in total.

The burn is currently carried out manually by multi-sig community participants, and RSR holders can propose different uses for the RSR instead - but for the time being, it is expected most holders will support a burn.

The USD value of RSR burned to date is: $152,119

Burn Date	RSR burned	USD value
May 21, 2026	9,493,217	17,109.44
Apr 23, 2026	14,398,322	25,168.27
Mar 23, 2026	16,096,854	25,223.77
Feb 20, 2026	12,674,832	19,861.46
Jan 23, 2026	3,903,976	6,117.53
Dec 21, 2025	9,829,776	15,403
Dec 1, 2025	4,744,733	7,435.00
Oct 21, 2025	2,975,478	4,662.57
Sep 25, 2025	1,965,638	3,080.16
Aug 22, 2025	1,182,789	1,853.43
Aug 3, 2025	2,734,623	4,285.15
Jul 25, 2025	527,802	827.07
Jun 20, 2025	3,746,598	5,870.92
May 20, 2025	1,281,683	2,008.40

MATTHEW

MAY 22, 2026

12 Key Factual Statements About Reserve Protocol's Proposed Milestone Unlocks for RSR

During the Reserve Q12026 Community Call, Reserve co-founder Nevin Freeman outlined how Reserve is expected to transition to milestone-based RSR unlocks.

Hello people of the internet.

During the Reserve Q12026 Community Call, Reserve co-founder Nevin Freeman outlined how Reserve is expected to transition to milestone-based RSR unlocks. That's no 30b RSR burns, no Bitcoin-like emission curves. Just a straight, "if we hit X revenue target, we can unlock X amount of RSR".

Pulling directly from the video, which you can watch below (jump to the 50 minute mark if you want), here are 12 key takeaways and a couple of quotes about the future (proposed) milestone unlocking plans.

Reserve’s previous RSR unlocking model mirrored Bitcoin’s emissions curve, but Freeman now says that approach is expected to be replaced.
The team believes the prior unlock schedule created fear more than direct market pressure, because the issue was not large-scale selling but the perception of a “big scary number.”
The new proposed unlocking framework would tie RSR unlocks to project milestones, rather than a fixed time-based emissions curve.
The first proposed milestone is $2.5 million in annualized net revenue, measured over the trailing six months: “If we get to the point where we have $2.5 million in annualized net revenue, that is a very clear sign that we have product-market fit for DTFs.”
Freeman says the current annualized net revenue figure is negative, around “minus seven point something million” at the time of the April 2026 presentation.
If the first milestone is reached, the plan is to unlock 3 billion RSR, but Freeman says that does not mean the RSR would be sold immediately.
The unlocked 3 billion RSR would likely be distributed strategically over roughly 1.5 to 2 years, with quarterly reporting used to show RSR trading activity retrospectively.
The team estimates that reaching $2.5 million in annualized net revenue could require roughly $300 million to $400 million in largely non-incentivized TVL, assuming around 80 basis points of ecosystem revenue after incentives.
The $2.5 million milestone is based on net revenue, not gross revenue, meaning Reserve would deduct relevant expenses and incentive spend from revenue before counting progress toward the unlock threshold: “If this number hits $2.5 million, it could be that we have $3.5 million in gross revenue and then we’re deducting $1 million in incentives.”
While the team considered locking in longer-term plans (e.g. future milestones), the team felt it was too difficult to project what metrics or targets would make sense after the first milestone. Instead, the plan is to define the first milestone now, then announce the next milestone only after that first target is reached.

MATTHEW

MAY 6, 2026

April 2026: Reserve Protocol's RSR Burn is 14M RSR

For April 2026, 14.4M RSR was burned, as noted in the Reserve Telegram channel. The actual burn took place on April 23, 2026.

Every month, a portion of the RSR supply is burned, a product of the fees primarily generated by the minting and holding of Index DTFs.

For April 2026, 14,398,322 RSR was burned, as noted in the Reserve Telegram channel. The actual burn took place on April 23, 2026.

Each month, the USD accrued in fees is used to market-buy RSR, before being sent to the furnace / the NULL address.

As Index DTFs grow in size, the burn is expected to accelerate. As of April 2026, 76,063,174 RSR has been burned in total.

The burn is currently carried out manually by multi-sig community participants, and RSR holders can propose different uses for the RSR instead - but for the time being, it is expected most holders will support a burn.

Burn Date	RSR burned	USD value
Apr 23, 2026	14,398,322	25,168.27
Mar 23, 2026	16,096,854	25,223.77
Feb 20, 2026	12,674,832	19,861.46
Jan 23, 2026	3,903,976	6,117.53
Dec 21, 2025	9,829,776	15,403.26
Dec 1, 2025	4,744,733	7,435
Oct 21, 2025	2,975,478	4,662.57
Sep 25, 2025	1,965,638	3,080.16
Aug 22, 2025	1,182,789	1,853.43
Aug 3, 2025	2,734,623	4,285.15
Jul 25, 2025	527,802	827.07
Jun 20, 2025	3,746,598	5,870.92
May 20, 2025	1,281,683	2,008.40

MATTHEW

APRIL 23, 2026

Reserve's $RSR Token Can Now Be Spent at Over 50 Million Merchants with AEON

$RSR can now be spent at over 50 million merchants across Southeast Asia, Nigeria, Mexico, Brazil, and Georgia.

$RSR can now be spent at over 50 million merchants across Southeast Asia, Nigeria, Mexico, Brazil, and Georgia. The integration, through a partnership with AEON - a payments infrastructure project building settlement rails for AI-driven commerce - puts RSR into physical retail and online checkout for the first time.

AEON Pay handles the transaction layer, as a mobile payment interface for Web3 assets, accessible through a Telegram Mini App and connected to Bitget Wallet, Binance Wallet, OKX Wallet, TokenPocket, KuCoin, and Bybit. Users do not leave familiar interfaces to pay - a practical detail that tends to determine whether crypto payments actually get used.

RSR's role inside Reserve has historically been narrow in a specific way: stakers provide first-loss capital on Yield DTFs, absorbing losses before other holders if collateral breaks, and in return take a share of yield. Governance rights come with it. But payments are something different, as they give the token a function that does not depend on the protocol's internal mechanics at all.

Reserve's product range is built around Decentralized Token Folios: on-chain instruments that bundle multiple crypto assets into a single token. They behave like index products: transparent composition, immediate redemption, composable with other DeFi protocols.

CMC20, built with CoinMarketCap, tracks the top 20 crypto assets by market cap in a single tradable token. Kraken and Bloomberg have also used Reserve's infrastructure to issue their own DTFs. Until now, these assets have lived almost entirely within DeFi - useful for portfolio exposure, not for buying anything.

If RSR circulates through a payments network, it stops behaving purely as a staking asset or governance token. The underlying structure is still more complex than a stablecoin, but the user experience starts to resemble one. But really, we hope to see DTFs arrive on AEON.

The expansion is targeted at markets where that framing already makes intuitive sense. Nigeria, Mexico, and Brazil are not markets where crypto is mainly a speculative asset - they are places where it functions as a parallel monetary system for people who cannot rely on local currency stability. AEON's further rollout is planned across Africa and Latin America, which sharpens that focus.

The more unusual part of this integration sits in the infrastructure underneath it. AEON Pay is built on x402, a payment protocol released by Coinbase's developer platform in May 2025. The mechanism is a reactivation of HTTP 402, a status code written into the HTTP specification in 1997 under the label "Payment Required."

It was included in the original spec as a placeholder for a future micropayment system that never arrived. Every major browser and server framework has recognized it for nearly three decades; it just never did anything. Coinbase built the protocol to finally use it, connecting HTTP-native payment requests to cheap blockchain settlement.

The reason x402 matters now, specifically, is AI agents. Autonomous software agents are making API calls, consuming data feeds, executing trades, and running multi-step workflows across services - and they need to pay for access to those services without human approval cycles. A credit card form is not a viable option for a process that runs in milliseconds.

x402 allows a server to respond to an agent's request with a payment demand, the agent pays on-chain, and the transaction proceeds - all within the same HTTP interaction.

AEON also supports ERC-8004, an emerging standard for trustless payment channels, and integrates with Google's Agent Payment Protocol, AP2 - a Google-led effort to standardize how AI agents authorize and settle payments.

The practical flow looks something like this: an agent uses Google's A2A protocol to locate a service, AP2 to authorize the transaction, and x402 to settle it. RSR is now a token that can move through that process.

That is a different kind of exposure than merchant payments. Merchant payments are real and immediate - 50 million merchants is a number that means something. But the agent economy is where the volume could get large in ways that are harder to predict, and Reserve now has a position in both.

Source

MATTHEW

APRIL 15, 2026

Does the Reserve Protocol Register app pass SEC Dealer-Broker Rules?

The SEC’s Division of Trading and Markets has given guidance that offers intel for DeFi users and the creators of DeFi front-ends, such as Reserve Protocol.

The SEC’s Division of Trading and Markets has given guidance that offers some intel for DeFi users and the creators of DeFi front-ends, such as Reserve Protocol's Register. The agency has given a checklist for software developers to avoid the radioactive label of an unregistered broker-dealer.

The guidance isn't law, but does give good intel, as summarized by TheDefiant, and we're going to attempt a layman's interpretation on how it applies to Reserve Protocol.

The Reserve Protocol’s Register app allows for minting and managing Index DTFs, which are similar to on-chain ETFs, as well as Yield DTFs, which are asset-backed currencies supported by diverse collateral baskets.

In our view, compliance hinges partly on the app’s refusal to touch the money. The SEC staff’s primary condition for safety is a total lack of custody, which Register clears by making users bring their own keys and crypto via third-party wallets. If the software never sees a private key and never holds a balance, it escapes the most traditional definition of a broker.

Based on the criteria outlined in the SEC staff guidance and the public documentation for the Reserve Protocol and its interface (Register), here is an evaluation of how the app aligns with those requirements:

1. Does not take custody of user funds

Pass: The Reserve Protocol and the Register app are explicitly designed as self-custody solutions. Users connect their own third-party wallets (like MetaMask or Ledger). According to the Reserve Terms and Conditions, the protocol does not have "possession, custody or control" over any user's digital assets.

2. Provides no investment advice or trade recommendations

Pass: The interface is built to facilitate the creation and management of DTFs. While it displays information about different DTFs and their underlying collateral, the documentation classifies this as "informational purposes only." It does not provide personalized advice, nor does it recommend specific trades to users.

3. Does not route or execute orders on users' behalf

Pass: The Register app acts as a front-end for interacting with on-chain smart contracts. When a user mints or redeems DTFs , the "execution" happens via the user's own wallet and the blockchain, not via a centralized matching engine or a proprietary routing service owned by the app operator. The app facilitates "user-initiated" transactions as defined in the guidance.

4. Generally charges a fixed percentage as a transaction fee

Pass: The Reserve Protocol utilizes a transparent, code-governed fee structure. DTFs can have specific "Mint Fees" and "Redemption Fees," which are typically set as a fixed percentage (e.g., 0.15% or 0.25%) by the specific DTF’s governance. These fees are programmed into the smart contracts rather than being dynamic "spreads" or hidden markups typical of traditional broker-dealers.

5. Exercises no discretion over transactions or market activity

Pass: Transactions on the Register app are atomic and governed by smart contracts. The protocol team does not have the ability to manually pause, reverse, or selectively approve individual user transactions. Rebalancing and collateral auctions are "entirely mechanistic based on on-chain price-feeds" and do not depend on human judgment or manual discretion by the developers.

Additional Prohibitions

Labeling Routes as "Best" or "Preferred": To remain compliant with this specific staff guidance, the Register app must ensure it does not label specific DTFs or trading paths with subjective terms like "Best Yield" or "Recommended." Most DeFi interfaces have recently moved toward neutral sorting (e.g., by TVL or alphabetical) to avoid this, and Reserve has historically been careful in this regard.
Commentary: The app must avoid marketing language that could be interpreted as financial promotion or investment advice. Which is basically Nevin's mantra.

Summary Table

Requirement	Status	Evidence
No Custody	✅ Pass	Uses self-custodial wallets; no control over user keys.
No Advice	✅ Pass	Purely informational interface; no trade recommendations.
No Routing/Execution	✅ Pass	Users sign and broadcast their own transactions.
Fixed % Fees	✅ Pass	On-chain mint/redeem fees are fixed by protocol parameters.
No Discretion	✅ Pass	Mechanistic, smart-contract-driven activity; no human "gatekeeper."

Conclusion: The Reserve Protocol’s "Register" app appears to align well with the SEC staff guidance for "covered user interfaces."

Its decentralized, non-custodial nature is exactly the type of architecture the guidance seeks to distinguish from traditional broker-dealer activities. We'll point out we are not lawyers, and may have missed nuances or got things wrong.

MATTHEW

APRIL 13, 2026

Reserve Protocol Launches Delegate Program: 60% of Core Voting Power to Community

ABC Labs and Confusion Capital have delegated 60% of their staked RSR voting power across four live Yield DTFs: eUSD, ETH+, bsdETH, and USD3.

Reserve Protocol now has its first group of Guardians, with six delegates now in place, and the majority of core voting power has been pushed out of the founding entities and into their hands.

ABC Labs and Confusion Capital have delegated 60% of their staked RSR voting power across four live Yield DTFs: eUSD, ETH+, bsdETH, and USD3. The move reduces direct control from the core collaborators and places it with a group of independent but accountable participants.

The program began on April 1 and will run for three months through June 30 as an initial test.

The delegates are already assigned, and each one covers two Yield DTFs (formerly RTokens), with three delegates watching every DTF. That overlap creates redundancy where governance has historically been thin. If one delegate misses something, the other two are still in the room.

The names are known participants - 0xd15co, Braden, Eureka, Ham, R72, and Zeb - now operating with a defined scope and visible responsibility. Their job is straightforward: read proposals, vote, and explain themselves in public.

That last requirement is non-negotiable: every vote must include a written rationale posted in the delegate’s forum thread.

Participation is tracked, with a 90% voting coverage target across all proposals. Miss it once, and the system flags it. Miss it twice, and they’re out. The role is voluntary and not permanent, but participation is required.

Delegates receive $250 per month in RSR, which is enough to formalize the role, but not enough to compete over. The expectation is that these are already engaged participants, not applicants chasing yield.

On eUSD, roughly 239.6 million stRSR has been distributed across delegates. ETH+ accounts for another 47.5 million. USD3 and bsdETH follow with smaller allocations. Across each product, a measurable share of governance has been moved out of the hands of its largest stakeholders.

In effect, delegates now sit between passive stakers and live governance in a layer that did not exist before. Previously, proposals often relied on a mix of core contributors and sporadic community attention. Now, specific people are expected to show up every time.

The system is still open, with no hard barrier to becoming a delegate and no restriction on who can receive delegated voting power. The six names announced this week are the starting point, and others can enter if they can attract a delegation and maintain the same level of participation.

Read more: Reserve Forums

MATTHEW

APRIL 8, 2026

Trail of Bits Points to Reserve Protocol for Blockchain Development Best Practices

Security firm Trail of Bits has singled out Reserve Protocol as an example of how DeFi code should be written.

Security firm Trail of Bits has singled out Reserve Protocol as an example of how DeFi code should be written - less for what it does, and more for how it thinks.

The context is a new write-up and Twitter thread from the audits firm, arguing that a large class of DeFi bugs can be caught early using a simple technique borrowed from physics: dimensional analysis. The premise is blunt. If the “units” in a formula don’t match, the formula is wrong. No exploit required, no edge case needed.

That sounds abstract until you translate it into DeFi terms. Instead of meters and seconds, the system deals in tokens, prices, liquidity, and shares. These are different “dimensions.” Mix them carelessly and you get outputs that look fine on-chain but don’t represent anything real.

Trail of Bits’ point is that most smart contracts don’t enforce this discipline. Solidity doesn’t know the difference between a token balance and a price. It just sees integers. That leaves developers relying on memory and convention, which is where things break.

Reserve Protocol takes a different approach, a lesson that’s been known for millenia but often ignored to people’s peril and the destruction of space shuttles: It writes the units down.

Across its contracts, variables are annotated with both their dimension and their scale. A value isn’t just “a number.” It’s something like “unit of account per token, scaled to 27 decimals.” That might sound like overkill, but it changes how the code is read. If a developer tries to combine two values that don’t belong together, the mismatch is visible immediately.

Trail of Bits credits this as a best practice because it turns reasoning into a first line of defense, one where you don’t need to understand the entire system to spot a mistake. If a function expects token amounts and receives decimals instead, the error becomes obvious - and it is an issue that has shown up in real audits.

The firm says this as a missing habit in DeFi development, with many protocols relying on testing and audits to catch logic bugs after the fact. Dimensional thinking moves that earlier in the process and filters out entire categories of errors before they become exploitable.

It also explains why some designs work and others don’t. In automated market makers, adding two different tokens together is meaningless unless you assume they hold the same value. That’s why stable pools can get away with it, and why the same formula breaks elsewhere. The math hasn’t changed but the assumptions have.

Reserve’s approach doesn’t require new tooling or language changes but discipline - something that has been obvious to long-time followers for a while. Label what each value represents, track how it changes, and be explicit when converting between forms. It’s closer to engineering than coding.

Trail of Bits is now pushing toward automation, with internal tools that can check these relationships across a codebase. But the endorsement of Reserve is the simpler takeaway. You don’t need a new compiler to avoid basic mistakes but you do need to know what your numbers mean. It’s a structure that is doing more work than most realize.

More Than $150,000 of RSR Has Now Been Burned on Reserve Protocol

Reserve Protocol Will Have AI Equity DTFs This Summer

12 Key Factual Statements About Reserve Protocol's Proposed Milestone Unlocks for RSR

Reserve's $RSR Token Can Now Be Spent at Over 50 Million Merchants with AEON

Reserve Protocol Launches Delegate Program: 60% of Core Voting Power to Community

More Than $150,000 of RSR Has Now Been Burned on Reserve Protocol

The DTF Family

May 2026: Reserve Protocol RSR Burn is 9.5M RSR

April 2026: Reserve Protocol's RSR Burn is 14M RSR

Does the Reserve Protocol Register app pass SEC Dealer-Broker Rules?

1. Does not take custody of user funds

2. Provides no investment advice or trade recommendations

3. Does not route or execute orders on users' behalf

4. Generally charges a fixed percentage as a transaction fee

5. Exercises no discretion over transactions or market activity

Additional Prohibitions

Summary Table

Trail of Bits Points to Reserve Protocol for Blockchain Development Best Practices

More Stories

Reserve Protocol Will Have AI Equity DTFs This Summer

May 2026: Reserve Protocol RSR Burn is 9.5M RSR

12 Key Factual Statements About Reserve Protocol's Proposed Milestone Unlocks for RSR

April 2026: Reserve Protocol's RSR Burn is 14M RSR

Reserve's $RSR Token Can Now Be Spent at Over 50 Million Merchants with AEON

Does the Reserve Protocol Register app pass SEC Dealer-Broker Rules?

1. Does not take custody of user funds

2. Provides no investment advice or trade recommendations

3. Does not route or execute orders on users' behalf

4. Generally charges a fixed percentage as a transaction fee

5. Exercises no discretion over transactions or market activity

Additional Prohibitions

Summary Table

Reserve Protocol Launches Delegate Program: 60% of Core Voting Power to Community

Trail of Bits Points to Reserve Protocol for Blockchain Development Best Practices