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Chainlink Reserve Water Cooler
Recorded: Aug. 14, 2025 Duration: 0:19:21Space Recording
Short Summary
In a recent discussion, crypto enthusiasts explored the launch of the Chainlink Reserve, a strategic initiative aimed at bolstering the Chainlink network's growth and sustainability. With historical revenue in the hundreds of millions, this project is set to enhance tokenomics and drive adoption in both DeFi and TradFi sectors.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Hey, everyone. Hey everyone, trying to get Zach in here as the speaker.
Hello, hello, can everyone hear me okay?
Do we want to give people a few minutes to come in?
I was looking forward to those spaces,
generic elevator music bops.
But I've never hosted one before,
so I don't know where the music is.
I don't know how to do it.
Oh, that's playing in my head.
You guys might have to find your own music for a minute or two.
All right, 701, maybe I'll give another minute or two then we can kind of get going here so we're here to talk about xrp today well we actually will for we actually will for a little
bit but that's the only reason i'm here. After appearing in that spaces last week, I've been converted.
But I also just invest in whatever I hear about last.
So maybe you can flip me again.
All right. We'll get going now, I guess.
Anyway, so my name is Fishy.
For people that know me, I've been in crypto as a retail investor since about 2013.
So that's about 12 years now.
And I've owned various projects before Chainlink ever existed.
Found Chainlink back in 2017.
My thesis at the time was, I see lots of blockchains out there.
I see a lot of scams out there.
Those are still the days of BitConnect and Dentecoin and things like that,
if you remember all the good old days.
And nobody else was trying to put data on the blockchain.
And I thought that was a very worthwhile thing that caught my attention.
And I've been a big Link Marine since then.
And so, yeah, so my thesis back in 2017 was no one else is putting data on the blockchain.
And my thesis today is that nobody else has a protocol as
comprehensive as Chainlink to basically facilitate TradFi and institutions coming on chain with their
use cases of tokenization and being able to do on-chain finance and all those other good things.
So that's basically my thesis today. And actually actually I wrote a long piece a day or two ago
that I pinned on my profile.
So if you want a comprehensive view on my thoughts,
there's some left curve stuff, right curve stuff,
it's on my profile.
But the reason I wanted to kind of help
put together this space today with Zach and Jay
is that there's been a lot of announcements
coming out recently with regards to the big announcement with the launch of the Chainlink Reserve,
and also just how the launch of that, along with the payment abstraction layer,
how that kind of impacts the tokenomics and the economics and all the other kind of aspects of Chainlink as a protocol that sometimes stuff's not really getting fully as
covered in, like, you know, the official comms coming out of the official Chainlink account.
So we thought it would make a lot of sense to put together a small little kind of community
hosted space to kind of discuss that ins and outs. So we're mostly going to talk about
the Chainlink Reserve, and then we'll kind of like maybe expand on that to cover some other topics.
So the format that we kind of discussed the past day or two was kind of go over some kind of questions and topics that I kind of, you know, converged upon with Zach and Jay.
and I'm going to throw some questions to him.
And I'm going to, you know, throw some questions to him.
He's going to kind of drop his thoughts
and then Jay and myself will kind of opine
and maybe add some additional clarity on them
or color or maybe some other kind of differing point of views
or other kind of supporting arguments
or context around what he's saying.
And so, yeah, so we'll take it away.
So that's basically what the format
of today's conversation is about. And I'll let Jay also introduce himself. Zach needs no introduction, obviously, but I will also allow him to say hi to everyone and kick it off.
I'm literally a nobody.
I have also been in the space for a very long time, but by design, I've kept out of the
spotlight a little bit.
But I really enjoy doing these spaces, so I was thrilled to be invited up by Fishy and
Zach to help represent the community and getting some of our pressing questions answered for
how this whole Chainlink thing works.
But yeah, just brief background.
I actually did work in the industry on the venture side briefly back in the 2017,
2018 era. And then since then, I've been just doing my own thing, managing my own investments.
So I'm entirely self-funded. I have no affiliation with any project whatsoever,
and I don't want you to follow me or do anything. Please don't send me money unless I go broke this
year, then send me money. But yeah, in the meantime, I'm just looking forward to getting some one-on-one time with these Chainlink bros up here,
answer some questions and dig into the Chainlink Reserve announcement.
Because I know like a lot of the community, I didn't exactly read the entirety of what they posted.
Because, you know, they say to do your own research.
But for me, that's mostly just asking other smarter people than me what it means.
So that's what I'm here for.
And I'll hand the mic over to Zach real quick.
Zach, we all know him.
We love him.
But maybe he's changed his background a little bit since last time.
So, Zach, how would you introduce yourself and how would you describe your role here?
Yeah, thanks, Jane.
Thanks, Fishi, for hosting the spaces.
So, everyone, my name is Zach.
You may know me as ChainlingGod or CLG on Twitter.
I think most of you here, just going through the names, know who I am.
But in case you don't, I am a Chainlink community liaison, which effectively means how I see
it as being like a bridge between the community and the Chainlink Labs team, which in practice
means arguing with people on Twitter a lot about Chainlink who say nasty misinformation stuff.
I try to do the best I can, try to educate people and post tweet threads
and do these kind of Twitter spaces and try in different kinds of format
just to educate people in the world.
So I've been in the community for quite a long time.
I remember posting with Fishy in the trenches in early 2019.
So it's been a very, very long journey, but it's been a lot of fun.
So, yeah, thanks for hosting Fishy, and thanks, Jay, for participating.
All right.
Well, with that, we'll dive right into the topics.
So the main course of the night is all about the Chainlink Reserve.
So, Zach, if you can just kind of tell us what was this big announcement
that just came out about a week ago?
Like, what is the Chainlink Reserve
and why does it change everything
that we know about Chainlink?
Of course, and I'll try to keep this part condensed
a little bit.
I think it's actually pretty straightforward
what was launched.
So last week, in case you missed it,
Chainlink announced and they launched
the Chainlink Reserve,
which is a strategic on-chain reserve of link tokens. It's primarily designed to support the long-term
growth and sustainability of the Chainlink network. And importantly, it is funded by both on-chain
and off-chain revenue that's been generated from the adoption of Chainlink by both DeFi and TradFi.
So more specifically, the reserve is really an extension
of something called payment abstraction.
And payment abstraction was something that Chainlink
talked about last year, I think even earlier.
It launched earlier this year,
and it effectively allows users of Chainlink services
to pay for Chainlink services in their preferred form of payment.
So that can be directly in link tokens, but that can also be in on-chain crypto. For example, ETH and USDC are
pretty common, but also off-chain forms of payments. So fiat, like wire transfers, traditional
bank payments. And doing so really reduces the friction of paying for Chainlink services. I can't emphasize that enough.
Allowing people to pay in anything that they already have
is a huge unlock to get a lot of the institutional users
adopting crypto services
because Chainlink spans both public chains
but also these private chain services.
And once those payments are made,
either directly on-chain or off-chain
and they're put on-chain in the form of stablecoins,
that goes through some on-chain or off-chain, and they're put on-chain in the form of stablecoins. That goes through some on-chain contracts that ultimately converts those payments into the link token using a decentralized exchange. So initially, that's Uniswap V3. In the future,
that could be more DEXs, and this could evolve and change over time. But right now, it's
Uniswap V3. You can see the transactions on chain if you want. This payment abstraction infrastructure was originally used for a service called SVR, which is Chainlink's MEV recapture system.
I won't go into that.
That's like a whole other, I could talk for hours about that thing.
But it was originally connected to SVR to convert Chainlink's portion of fees into link.
And it's been expanded over time to include more on-chain services as well as off-chain revenue sources. And now with this announcement, the fees that are flowing through
the system get converted to link and put into this strategic reserve. So what we've seen,
there was a reserve top-up last week. There was one today, this morning, about a million dollars
each week. It's worth about 2.5 million now with the link price moving around.
And what was also announced
with the reserve last week
was that Chainlink has generated
hundreds of millions of dollars
in revenue historically,
which will be used to support
the growth of the reserve over time.
So, you know, I know there's been questions
about Chainlink doesn't make as much
as a kebab stand or something.
I think that's what the meme was,
but a lot of that revenue
has been off chain.
So there's nowhere you can actually view on chain
because that's that preferred form of payment.
So TODR, Chainlink Reserve is this massive economic upgrade
to the Chainlink network.
It initiates what is effectively a buyback program,
flip the switch, so to speak.
If you want to track the reserve itself,
you can go to reserve.chain.link
and you can see the dashboard.
You can look at Etherscan.
People have been sending donations to it. Please don't do that. You don't need to do that.
Just keep your link. It's fine. You mean to tell me that those donations were not the revenue
of Chainlink? Those minuscule amounts of dust that people were sending were not what DeFi
Lama reports as our entire revenue? I know. It's surprising. Chainlink makes more than 0.777 link per day. It's fascinating. Next, you're going to tell me that Chainlink itself is not
just a coupon, that it actually, when you're talking about the payment abstraction layer,
you're converting whatever dollars they give you into real Chainlink buys. Is that a misunderstanding?
I think the most shocking thing is that Chainlink's not a blockchain.
Oh man, I still can't even wrap my head around that, but I'm going to keep telling people
what it is.
It's the blockchain of blockchains.
If you want to review the reserve more, check out the blog.
If you're like Jay, you can just listen to this space.
That's perfectly fine.
We're here to educate you.
