01 Executive Summary

The ReSource Protocol provides a comprehensive toolbox for the creation of distributed mutual credit systems that grant participants access to cost-effective credit at extremely competitive terms, further collaborative commerce, and give rise to a new kind of stablecoin which derives its stability and value from organic market forces.

At the heart of ReSource lies a multi-sided lending system that allows businesses to extend credit to each other in the form of goods provided and services rendered. Effectively, this means that participants in the system can access each other’s goods and services in return for guarantees to provide their own equally-valued goods and services to other participants in the network.

This cyclical trade model is made possible through a series of DLT-based instruments that distribute underwriting processes and risk management while generating a self-regulating stablecoin in which credit is extended, cleared and settled. This stablecoin endogenously arises from the system’s debt cycle: it is minted when debt is created, and destroyed when it is redeemed. This ensures that the supply of stablecoin units always matches the demand exercised on them by outstanding loans.

The capabilities of the ReSource protocol can be adapted to various use cases, and may accommodate the needs of closed-commerce mutual trading communities, as well as for-profit permissionless open-market applications. The ReSource Network, as the first application built on the ReSource protocol, is a blend of both and primarily addresses global SMBs, freelancers and startups.

In short, the ReSource Network offers participants access to an extremely cost-efficient credit-line in the form of an overdraft-enabled current account. Balances on this account can then be spent in an Amazon\eBay-like environment, featuring goods and services offered by other participants.

This mutual-credit enabled Marketplace poses the groundwork for a suite of products, offering mutual credit services to businesses and individuals in B2B, and later on in B2C scenarios.

The ReSource Network utilizes an instance of the ReSource protocol, which eventually will be governed by a DAO consisting of its asset- and stakeholders. The ReSource protocol allows for the creation of additional instances, which differ from the instance described in this paper in the stablecoin arising from their operations, their credit policy, and internal network dynamics. While the stablecoin arising from the activity of the ReSource Network (rUSD) is designed to be pegged to the US Dollar, future projects may create their own trading networks pegged to other assets, stable or otherwise, or alternatively forgo external pegging to introduce their own free-floating currency.

While functioning independently in every essential way, these trading networks have means of interacting with each other in ways that maximize mutual benefit while preventing the overspill of risk from one network to another.