No.293
Resolv RESOLV
the delta-neutral dollar
🎭 a tightrope-walking accountant carrying one weight up and one weight down, so the dollar on its head never tips
💬 “I carry two weights that pull against each other, ETH and BTC in one hand, a short bet in the other. When one rises the other sinks, so the dollar on my head holds steady. Stay balanced, and the wobble pays you back.”
- USR is a dollar stablecoin backed by ETH and BTC, not bank dollars.
- It holds its peg by hedging: hold the crypto, short an equal amount in futures, so swings cancel out.
- Three tokens: USR (the dollar), RLP (an insurance buffer), and RESOLV (governance). Profit is shared daily.
- RESOLV supply is fixed at 1 billion with no burn, while USR's supply moves with demand.
📖 The Story
June 2023. Resolv Labs set out to answer a stubborn question: could you build a dollar for crypto that doesn't sit in a bank, yet still pays you to hold it? Most stablecoins like USDT and USDC keep real dollars in a vault and print one coin per dollar. Resolv wanted its dollar to live on-chain, backed by crypto, and to earn a steady yield from how it is built. The founders are reported as Fedor Chmilev, Ivan Kozlov, and Tim Shekikhachev.
September 2024. The protocol went live with USR, a stablecoin pegged 1:1 to the dollar but backed by ETH and BTC. To keep it from swinging with the crypto market, Resolv runs a delta-neutral trade: it holds the ETH and BTC, then shorts an equal amount with perpetual futures. When the crypto climbs, the short loses the same amount; when it drops, the short gains it back. The two halves cancel, so the dollar value parks near $1, while staking rewards and funding income pile up as yield. USR grew past $600 million in assets fairly quickly.
Underneath USR sits a second token, RLP, the Resolv Liquidity Pool token. It is the safety mat: an insurance layer that takes the first losses if the hedge ever slips, protecting USR's peg. Profits are paid out daily, shared between RLP holders and people who stake USR. One coin to spend, one coin to absorb the shocks.
Mid-2025. The RESOLV governance token launched on Ethereum (sources disagree on whether it was May or June), distributed partly through a Binance HODLer Airdrop. A roughly $10 million funding round, with backers including Coinbase Ventures and Delphi Ventures, helped expand USR. The accountant had finished the high wire and now had a crowd watching from below.
📊 Stats
These bands are our editorial read, not market data.
🧩 How it works
Resolv is not its own blockchain. It is a set of smart contracts, a DeFi protocol, living on Ethereum (and in the BNB Chain ecosystem). The trick is simple to picture: hold a risky asset and a matching bet against it, and you are left holding something flat and stable. Hold the crypto long, hold an equal short, and the price swings erase each other.
🌗 Light & Shadow
- A dollar that earns its keep: the same hedge that holds the peg also produces yield from funding and staking, paid out daily
- A real safety layer. RLP sits under USR and takes the first losses, so the stablecoin has a buffer before its peg is touched
- The RESOLV token is capped at 1 billion with no burn, so the governance supply is predictable, even as USR itself flexes with demand
- The peg depends on the futures market behaving. Yield comes from funding rates, which can turn negative and quietly cost the protocol instead of paying it
- It is young. The protocol only launched in 2024, so it hasn't lived through many years of stress the way fiat-backed stablecoins have
- RLP can absorb losses, but it is not infinite. A violent enough move could still threaten the peg, and much of the hedging leans on centralized venues
🧬 Evolution lineage
Resolv is not a fork of any coin and shares no code with another chain. It belongs to the delta-neutral, perp-hedged stablecoin family, the same playbook as Ethena (USDe): back a dollar with crypto, hedge it with futures. Resolv's twist is the separate RLP insurance layer sitting under USR. A thematic sibling of Ethena, not a relative by code.
🧭 Meet other friends
❓ FAQ
- What is Resolv?
- A DeFi protocol on Ethereum that issues USR, a stablecoin pegged 1:1 to the US dollar. Instead of holding bank dollars, USR is backed by ETH and BTC, and a hedging trade keeps the value steady while earning yield. RESOLV is its governance token.
- How does USR stay near a dollar?
- It uses a delta-neutral strategy: Resolv holds ETH and BTC as collateral and shorts an equal amount with perpetual futures. When the crypto rises or falls, the short moves the opposite way, so the two cancel out and the dollar value stays put.
- What are USR, RLP, and RESOLV?
- USR is the stablecoin you spend or stake. RLP is an insurance layer underneath that takes the first losses to protect USR's peg. RESOLV is the governance and utility token. Profits are shared daily with RLP holders and USR stakers.
- How much RESOLV exists?
- RESOLV has a fixed supply of 1 billion tokens, with no burn mechanism, so that number never grows. Note that USR is separate: the stablecoin's supply expands and shrinks with demand, while the RESOLV token stays capped at 1 billion.
⚠️ Not investment advice. All figures are for information only