A Founder’s Letter: Resolv in 2025 and Beyond
Mar 25, 2025
by Ivan, co-founder of Resolv
We are used to the fact that market leaders in stablecoins are “transactional”. Indeed, USDT and USDC are great at enabling payments and on/off-ramps. Still, we are just scratching the surface of a potentially much larger use case.
This underplayed narrative is “investment” stablecoins, fueled by a broader set of crypto-native returns. Replacing traditional vaults, they serve as perfect rails for consistent crypto yield.
By utilizing a flexible hybrid approach to sourcing such yields, Resolv aims to build the true yield powerhouse. Our goal is to provide the infrastructure for the full range of investment solutions as we grow along with the industry. This is our domain expertise and our passion.
Yield-bearing stablecoins segment will become huge, since crypto can be a great source of alpha, and asset base is global.
Still, there are two major obstacles hindering this potential growth: scalability and risks.
Scalability is limited, because onchain markets are relatively small - yields compress pretty fast.
Crypto risks still act as a proverbial boogeyman in the minds of TradFi people: for many, even 5x higher returns won’t justify “touching crypto”.
We need to build a yield-generating solution which can scale along with the market, and keep crypto-related risks at bay.
Resolv is building exactly that.
Yield Scaling
So how do we improve the scalability of yield sources backing the stablecoin return?
Risking to oversimplify things, the answer is to:
Choose most scalable sources
Having more of them
Delta-neutral strategy backing is a great source of yields. It relies heavily on perpetual futures, and perps are massive. The trading volumes are 5-10 times higher than spot. Open interest is also good: ~$60bn for BTC, ~$10bn for ETH (though down almost 3x lately) and ~$5bn for SOL.
Still, there is a bit of a glass ceiling here. If you take these 3 assets, actual capacity for the market (before feeling material impact) is at around $20bn. It’s good, and it will take time to reach the limits here, but not great if we want to build big and into the future.
What’s more, counterparty exposure limits with CEXes (where the perps trade) and general liquidity on DEXes limit the opportunities for any single strategy operator. Not mentioning the fact that having single entity to hold majority of the positions is a huge systemic risk.
In plain words, that means we need to diversify. And not only across underlying assets and exchanges within single delta-neutral strategy.
We need more yield sources.
They can be different: from LSTs and LRTs to lending markets. These sources can be created by external providers and projects, ran by third-parties and overseen by dedicated risk curators. We can also solve the liquidity fragmentation problem - as these sources are backing a single stablecoin, driving the liquidity flywheel.
What we need to make it work is a modular approach and onchain-focused architecture - two key elements of Resolv.
You may be asking: “Ok, so you’ll just combine a bunch of crypto yields and see how that flies?”.
Not quite.
We will definitely see more projects building in the yield-bearing stablecoins space. And there will be different sources - from delta-neutral to MEV to AI agents and HFT strategies. Not diving into scalability issues of specific solutions, one thing they will have in common is risk exposure (though specific risks will be different for each).
And this takes us to the next topic. Enter the risk segregation.
Risk Segregation
Every yield source comes with a set of specific risks. In delta-neutral strategy, for example, the major risks are funding rates volatility (holding perpetual futures may lead to a loss that can eat into the peg of the stablecoin) and counterparty exposure (be it CEXes or DEXes).
Other sources will have their own unique risks. When you combine many different sources to back a stablecoin - you face a high probability of depeg. And a loss of peg marks the end of the stablecoin - we have seen this happening a lot in the past. Stablecoins are not loss-tolerant at all.
You just can’t create a stable product if you mix all these different sources up.
The solution is to segregate risks into a separate instrument, which will absorb the losses, if they occur.
This instrument will be more volatile, than the stablecoin, but will provide outsized returns. In TradFi, this is a concept known as tranching.
Resolv utilizes this approach to contain the risks of the yield sources.
In this case, stablecoin (USR) is the senior tranche, while a separate token (RLP) takes a role of the junior tranche. In effect, RLP acts as a scalable decentralized external insurance fund.
Stablecoin projects usually have insurance funds in some form, but they are internal: sitting with the project’s treasury, these funds are limited in size (you need to separately raise money for them and pay interest), are less transparent and pretty rigid.
Externalized insurance fund like RLP grows along with USR, is self-balancing, transparent and driven by the market.
RLP gets a share of the yields generated by total protocol TVL (that of USR and RLP), and since RLP TVL is just a fraction of it, RLP gets outsized returns. This effect can be considered to be a built-in leverage, which can’t be reproduced without the asset base of USR.
Moreover, RLP is liquid and integrated within lending markets and yield stripping protocols. Imagine your prop delta-neutral strategy had that.
[More context for finance nerds, like us: in the future, we may have separate RLP tokens for separate types of risk exposures. There may be “Binance RLP” which handles credit risk (think of credit default swaps in TradFi), or “HyperLiquid RLP”, which handles smart contract risk. Brand new markets and tradeable risk instruments can be created out of it].
In short, we are able to take strategy-specific risks away and sell them to the market in the form of high-yielding RLP token.
Having “above average crypto-driven returns without the crypto-related risks” in our hands, we can double down on the distribution to the more conservative users out there.
So let us look into this part a bit more.
Distribution
Distribution is key. Crypto battles of the future will be won and lost here.
Frankly speaking, I believe stablecoins will have an upper hand here, both in crypto and in TradFi.
In crypto, they act as perfect liquidity flywheels, driving TVLs of chains and projects. They just have an established product market fit.
And if you compare stablecoins to structured products of TradFi, stables are better in almost every aspect: liquidity, transferability, capital efficiency (you can use them as collateral and create leverage), self-custody.
Let’s try to imagine the potential users as a continuous spectrum. On the left side will be crypto natives, farmers and power users. On the right side will be someone’s granny keeping cash under the pillow (and also some conservative family offices and hedge funds). As we go through this spectrum, we reach more stickiness.
Starting with the liquidity flywheels and crypto-native mechanics on the left, the goal is to consistently move to the right through infiltrating more traditional rails, such as neo-banks. And this is our main target for the coming years, as we grow and establish licensed presence globally.
In crypto, network effects provide outsized returns, so being able to turn other market participants into your distribution agents is massive.
By enabling third-party participation in yield-generation (as strategy originators or risk-curators), Resolv is expanding the network effects. Take a look at how Morpho is growing through risk-curators bringing in new product opportunities and liquidity, as a result. Or, consider Pendle, where liquidity flywheels drive projects to integrate, increasing network effects even further.
We see how many projects try to build a “vertical moat” by capturing all stages of value generation, keeping economics to themselves, but also becoming “locked-out” from cooperative expansion.
Instead of doing this, we will be building “horizontal moat”, where distribution and revenue generation is benefitting all the participants. We want to stay as credibly neutral in this process as possible, optimizing for the best output for the product.
Stablecoins have an edge in distribution by construction.
And network effects scale this advantage even more.
Note on Relevance
There is an elephant in the room with any crypto project - it's moat, ability to keep pace with the market and stay relevant. We believe this is a huge concern, when projects play out their narrative in a couple of years and then slowly dissolve into oblivion. To stay ahead of the competition in the super-dynamic crypto markets, you need to be able to integrate new yield sources and capitalize on the new narratives as they appear. And this is what we enable with our modular approach.
Don’t forget about major contributor to crypto yields: token incentivization. Liquidity shifts from one project to another, hunting for the drops and massive APYs for early liquidity bootstraps. By allocating liquidity to broader yield sources (projects), we’ll be able to capture that part, too.
Roadmap
It’s quite engaging to look into how big things will become in the future, but there is more specific work to be done at hand. Let’s check our plans for the next few months.
We align them with key elements highlighted above - affecting yield sources, risks or distribution.
The first highlight is our integration with Superstate which is currently ongoing. It is the first instance of third-party yield source where we are benefitting from more stable and diversified funding rates.
To broaden our asset base, we will be adding BTC as an underlying. Our onchain-focused approach gives us an edge in using different BTC LSTs / LRTs in stablecoin backing, so expect more partnerships and higher returns driven by relevant solutions.
Distribution-wise, we aim to put our products where the demand is, so expanding to new chains with emerging ecosystems is a major part of growth. We have more than $150mn of TVL on Base already and are also HyperBullish, but there is more to come.
Let us not forget about other distribution channels, such as wallets and CEXes (expect more news on that front coming your way). Another massive source of liquidity inflows comes from crypto projects treasuries (handled by asset managers like Karpatkey) and backing other stablecoins.
Still a lot of work to do, but that makes me even more excited. We love what we do, and we are good at it (traction is the best metric). More challenges - more opportunities.
Stay strong, stay true, great times ahead ✌️
by Ivan, co-founder of Resolv
We are used to the fact that market leaders in stablecoins are “transactional”. Indeed, USDT and USDC are great at enabling payments and on/off-ramps. Still, we are just scratching the surface of a potentially much larger use case.
This underplayed narrative is “investment” stablecoins, fueled by a broader set of crypto-native returns. Replacing traditional vaults, they serve as perfect rails for consistent crypto yield.
By utilizing a flexible hybrid approach to sourcing such yields, Resolv aims to build the true yield powerhouse. Our goal is to provide the infrastructure for the full range of investment solutions as we grow along with the industry. This is our domain expertise and our passion.
Yield-bearing stablecoins segment will become huge, since crypto can be a great source of alpha, and asset base is global.
Still, there are two major obstacles hindering this potential growth: scalability and risks.
Scalability is limited, because onchain markets are relatively small - yields compress pretty fast.
Crypto risks still act as a proverbial boogeyman in the minds of TradFi people: for many, even 5x higher returns won’t justify “touching crypto”.
We need to build a yield-generating solution which can scale along with the market, and keep crypto-related risks at bay.
Resolv is building exactly that.
Yield Scaling
So how do we improve the scalability of yield sources backing the stablecoin return?
Risking to oversimplify things, the answer is to:
Choose most scalable sources
Having more of them
Delta-neutral strategy backing is a great source of yields. It relies heavily on perpetual futures, and perps are massive. The trading volumes are 5-10 times higher than spot. Open interest is also good: ~$60bn for BTC, ~$10bn for ETH (though down almost 3x lately) and ~$5bn for SOL.
Still, there is a bit of a glass ceiling here. If you take these 3 assets, actual capacity for the market (before feeling material impact) is at around $20bn. It’s good, and it will take time to reach the limits here, but not great if we want to build big and into the future.
What’s more, counterparty exposure limits with CEXes (where the perps trade) and general liquidity on DEXes limit the opportunities for any single strategy operator. Not mentioning the fact that having single entity to hold majority of the positions is a huge systemic risk.
In plain words, that means we need to diversify. And not only across underlying assets and exchanges within single delta-neutral strategy.
We need more yield sources.
They can be different: from LSTs and LRTs to lending markets. These sources can be created by external providers and projects, ran by third-parties and overseen by dedicated risk curators. We can also solve the liquidity fragmentation problem - as these sources are backing a single stablecoin, driving the liquidity flywheel.
What we need to make it work is a modular approach and onchain-focused architecture - two key elements of Resolv.
You may be asking: “Ok, so you’ll just combine a bunch of crypto yields and see how that flies?”.
Not quite.
We will definitely see more projects building in the yield-bearing stablecoins space. And there will be different sources - from delta-neutral to MEV to AI agents and HFT strategies. Not diving into scalability issues of specific solutions, one thing they will have in common is risk exposure (though specific risks will be different for each).
And this takes us to the next topic. Enter the risk segregation.
Risk Segregation
Every yield source comes with a set of specific risks. In delta-neutral strategy, for example, the major risks are funding rates volatility (holding perpetual futures may lead to a loss that can eat into the peg of the stablecoin) and counterparty exposure (be it CEXes or DEXes).
Other sources will have their own unique risks. When you combine many different sources to back a stablecoin - you face a high probability of depeg. And a loss of peg marks the end of the stablecoin - we have seen this happening a lot in the past. Stablecoins are not loss-tolerant at all.
You just can’t create a stable product if you mix all these different sources up.
The solution is to segregate risks into a separate instrument, which will absorb the losses, if they occur.
This instrument will be more volatile, than the stablecoin, but will provide outsized returns. In TradFi, this is a concept known as tranching.
Resolv utilizes this approach to contain the risks of the yield sources.
In this case, stablecoin (USR) is the senior tranche, while a separate token (RLP) takes a role of the junior tranche. In effect, RLP acts as a scalable decentralized external insurance fund.
Stablecoin projects usually have insurance funds in some form, but they are internal: sitting with the project’s treasury, these funds are limited in size (you need to separately raise money for them and pay interest), are less transparent and pretty rigid.
Externalized insurance fund like RLP grows along with USR, is self-balancing, transparent and driven by the market.
RLP gets a share of the yields generated by total protocol TVL (that of USR and RLP), and since RLP TVL is just a fraction of it, RLP gets outsized returns. This effect can be considered to be a built-in leverage, which can’t be reproduced without the asset base of USR.
Moreover, RLP is liquid and integrated within lending markets and yield stripping protocols. Imagine your prop delta-neutral strategy had that.
[More context for finance nerds, like us: in the future, we may have separate RLP tokens for separate types of risk exposures. There may be “Binance RLP” which handles credit risk (think of credit default swaps in TradFi), or “HyperLiquid RLP”, which handles smart contract risk. Brand new markets and tradeable risk instruments can be created out of it].
In short, we are able to take strategy-specific risks away and sell them to the market in the form of high-yielding RLP token.
Having “above average crypto-driven returns without the crypto-related risks” in our hands, we can double down on the distribution to the more conservative users out there.
So let us look into this part a bit more.
Distribution
Distribution is key. Crypto battles of the future will be won and lost here.
Frankly speaking, I believe stablecoins will have an upper hand here, both in crypto and in TradFi.
In crypto, they act as perfect liquidity flywheels, driving TVLs of chains and projects. They just have an established product market fit.
And if you compare stablecoins to structured products of TradFi, stables are better in almost every aspect: liquidity, transferability, capital efficiency (you can use them as collateral and create leverage), self-custody.
Let’s try to imagine the potential users as a continuous spectrum. On the left side will be crypto natives, farmers and power users. On the right side will be someone’s granny keeping cash under the pillow (and also some conservative family offices and hedge funds). As we go through this spectrum, we reach more stickiness.
Starting with the liquidity flywheels and crypto-native mechanics on the left, the goal is to consistently move to the right through infiltrating more traditional rails, such as neo-banks. And this is our main target for the coming years, as we grow and establish licensed presence globally.
In crypto, network effects provide outsized returns, so being able to turn other market participants into your distribution agents is massive.
By enabling third-party participation in yield-generation (as strategy originators or risk-curators), Resolv is expanding the network effects. Take a look at how Morpho is growing through risk-curators bringing in new product opportunities and liquidity, as a result. Or, consider Pendle, where liquidity flywheels drive projects to integrate, increasing network effects even further.
We see how many projects try to build a “vertical moat” by capturing all stages of value generation, keeping economics to themselves, but also becoming “locked-out” from cooperative expansion.
Instead of doing this, we will be building “horizontal moat”, where distribution and revenue generation is benefitting all the participants. We want to stay as credibly neutral in this process as possible, optimizing for the best output for the product.
Stablecoins have an edge in distribution by construction.
And network effects scale this advantage even more.
Note on Relevance
There is an elephant in the room with any crypto project - it's moat, ability to keep pace with the market and stay relevant. We believe this is a huge concern, when projects play out their narrative in a couple of years and then slowly dissolve into oblivion. To stay ahead of the competition in the super-dynamic crypto markets, you need to be able to integrate new yield sources and capitalize on the new narratives as they appear. And this is what we enable with our modular approach.
Don’t forget about major contributor to crypto yields: token incentivization. Liquidity shifts from one project to another, hunting for the drops and massive APYs for early liquidity bootstraps. By allocating liquidity to broader yield sources (projects), we’ll be able to capture that part, too.
Roadmap
It’s quite engaging to look into how big things will become in the future, but there is more specific work to be done at hand. Let’s check our plans for the next few months.
We align them with key elements highlighted above - affecting yield sources, risks or distribution.
The first highlight is our integration with Superstate which is currently ongoing. It is the first instance of third-party yield source where we are benefitting from more stable and diversified funding rates.
To broaden our asset base, we will be adding BTC as an underlying. Our onchain-focused approach gives us an edge in using different BTC LSTs / LRTs in stablecoin backing, so expect more partnerships and higher returns driven by relevant solutions.
Distribution-wise, we aim to put our products where the demand is, so expanding to new chains with emerging ecosystems is a major part of growth. We have more than $150mn of TVL on Base already and are also HyperBullish, but there is more to come.
Let us not forget about other distribution channels, such as wallets and CEXes (expect more news on that front coming your way). Another massive source of liquidity inflows comes from crypto projects treasuries (handled by asset managers like Karpatkey) and backing other stablecoins.
Still a lot of work to do, but that makes me even more excited. We love what we do, and we are good at it (traction is the best metric). More challenges - more opportunities.
Stay strong, stay true, great times ahead ✌️