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# Why the reserve is public
- URL: https://blog.dega.trade/why-the-reserve-is-public/
- Published: 2026-10-16T09:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-11-10T20:11:05.000Z
- Description: The reserve backs payouts, not notional balances. It takes fees in and pays payouts out, and it sits on Robinhood Chain where anyone can see it.
- Author: Dega editorial
- Tags: Payouts

Before you pay $150 for an assessment, there is a fair question to ask. If you pass and earn a payout, where does that money come from, and can you check that it is there?

At comparable firms you take their word for it, because their reserves are self-reported. Dega's payout reserve is held in USDG on Robinhood Chain and is publicly visible, and every payout settles onchain, verifiable by anyone with a transaction hash.

## Three ledgers, kept apart

The paper says every question about solvency reduces to keeping three ledgers apart.

| Ledger                | What it holds                                                                                       | What it is never                                       |
| --------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------ |
| Simulated account     | A notional balance marked against live Lighter prices, funding and conditions. A performance score. | Trader cash, or any withdrawable amount                |
| USDG reserve          | Assessment fees in, trader payouts out. Held on Robinhood Chain and publicly visible.               | Margin for the hedge, or a source of operating cost    |
| House trading account | Dega's own funds, paying for the hedge. Segregated permanently.                                     | A source of trader payouts, or funded from the reserve |

Your account is the first row. Orders never reach Lighter's order book, and the balance is not your money. Dega's hedge positions sit in the third row. They are Dega's own, never yours.

## What goes in, and what comes out

Every assessment fee, net of gas, goes into the reserve on receipt. On a $150 fee that is $149.50.

Payouts come out of the reserve and from nowhere else. Two things never come out of it. Hedge margin is funded from the house account only, and operating costs are funded separately and never drawn from the reserve. A loss on the hedge book must never be able to reach money owed to a trader.

## Payouts, not notionals

The reserve backs payouts, not account balances. Twelve funded $10,000 accounts represent $120,000 of notional balance. At one full profit cycle each, $800 apiece, the liability is $9,600.

The paper calls confusing the two the most common error made about this category, and it is why a $25,000 seed is enough to launch. Its stress test has all twelve withdrawing on the same day: $9,600 paid, $15,400 left, solvent.

Payouts are paid in USDG and settled by smart contract, with no discretionary approval in between. They are capped at $800 per person per day, with a lifetime limit of 20% of the deployable reserve at the moment the account is funded: $4,000 at the recommended $25,000 seed. Anything above the daily cap [settles in order](https://blog.dega.trade/pending-claims-settle-in-order/) on the following days.

## The check that runs every day

Visibility shows the balance. The admission gate keeps that balance ahead of what is owed. It tracks two liabilities continuously:

- **Hard payable:** pending payout claims plus 80% of the profit standing in every funded account, valued on conservative liquidation equity.
- **Stressed contingent:** expected payouts from assessments likely to pass, and from funded accounts not yet in profit.

The reserve must exceed both plus an operating buffer. When that is threatened, Dega stops selling assessments and stops activating funded accounts. Payouts already earned are never affected. No funded account opens unless the reserve already covers its liability at a 2.0 stress multiple, $1,600 for a $10,000 account, so the reserve can never owe more than it holds. The gate is sized as though the hedge were absent.

One person runs the daily solvency check every day, and it takes precedence over everything else. It reconciles four records that can silently diverge: the internal account ledger, the onchain reserve and payout record, the fee treasury and the house trading account. A divergence is an incident, not a rounding difference.

## Why visibility matters

Daily caps pace payment. They never reduce what is owed. The paper's view is that a firm using caps to manage solvency has already failed and is concealing it. A reserve you can see lets you check the backing yourself, rather than take it on trust.

Visibility is also a launch condition. The second gate in the paper's launch sequence requires the payout contract to be independently reviewed and the reserve publicly visible, and no paid user is admitted before it is met.

It does not remove every risk, and the paper names one plainly: Robinhood Chain is young and holds the reserve, so a chain-level failure would freeze payouts.

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*Nothing has launched. Every figure in this post is a design figure from the Dega yellow paper, version 2.0, dated 22 September 2026\. Dega is not an exchange, broker, custodian or investment manager. Accounts are simulated: orders do not reach Lighter's order book, and the account balance is not your money. Dega's hedge positions are Dega's own, never yours. Payouts are subject to a lifetime limit of 20% of the publicly visible reserve and a per-user cap of $800 a day.*