ResearchCoin (RSC) Price

ResearchCoin (RSC) is an ERC-20 utility token in the ResearchHub ecosystem, used to incentivize contributions to open research such as sharing, curation, and discussion. Its design focuses on connecting research-collaboration activities that the community considers valuable with token rewards, funding, and governance participation. RSC has a total supply of 1 billion tokens. Holding RSC does not mean holding equity in ResearchHub or its related companies; its role in the platform derives from platform rules and available features, such as bounties, tipping, and voting on key community decisions.

Users can earn RSC by sharing, curating, and discussing academic scientific content on ResearchHub; how much RSC a given activity earns depends on the value the community considers that activity to have created. In other words, rewards are not necessarily issued at a fixed amount simply for completing a fixed action. Earned RSC can be used to set content bounties, tip valuable content, and participate in voting on key community decisions. This process connects “a contribution being recognized by the community” with token uses that can continue to fund, incentivize, or express governance preferences, but it does not constitute guaranteed income.

RSC has both an Ethereum mainnet version and a Base version; the ResearchHub Foundation states that RSC on Base is backed 1:1 by RSC on Ethereum mainnet. This relationship indicates that the Base version is not a separately defined set of independent supply rights. The purpose of deploying on Base is to use the lower Gas costs and faster transaction experience it provides as an Ethereum Layer 2 network. When moving RSC between the two chains, users must use a cross-chain application that supports the route and verify the destination network and contract address; the cross-chain process differs from sending an ERC-20 transaction on a single chain.

RSC has a total supply of 1 billion tokens, of which 60%, or 600 million tokens, is allocated to the community. The maximum annual release for the community portion is 5% of total supply, or up to 50 million tokens; “maximum” here is an annual cap, not an amount that is necessarily released every year. The materials divide this annual cap into 4% of total supply entering the community through the ResearchHub platform and 1% going to the foundation. Therefore, when assessing newly circulating supply, one should first examine how much is actually released in a year and then distinguish the release channels, rather than treating the entire 600 million-token community allocation as circulating at once.

Under the disclosed allocation, the community and users receive 60% (600 million tokens), ResearchHub Inc receives 20% (200 million tokens), founders receive 10% (100 million tokens), and future employees receive 10% (100 million tokens). These are total-supply allocation buckets and do not mean that these tokens enter the market simultaneously. Release arrangements determine when different buckets may become circulating: ResearchHub Inc's portion is labeled non-liquid, with future liquidity to be communicated separately; the future employee portion has a 48-month linear release; and the founder portion has either a 48-month arrangement with a cliff or a 96-month linear arrangement. Therefore, when assessing supply at a given point in time, total supply, allocation, vesting/unlocking, and actual circulation should be distinguished as four separate concepts.

RSC's token generation event (TGE) occurred on August 1, 2020, and the official issuance schedule states that the total supply may gradually enter circulation over a period of up to 12 years from that date. This time frame describes a possible release span, rather than meaning that all tokens will necessarily be released by a particular date. This arrangement, together with the community's annual cap, constrains the pace at which supply enters circulation: total supply is a fixed cap, allocation buckets specify attribution, and vesting arrangements and annual caps further affect when release may occur. It alone cannot establish the real-time circulating supply on a given day, as the real-time amount also depends on releases actually carried out.