the reserve

The reserve is the whole of HERA's capacity to pay. Everything else in the protocol is machinery for deciding when to draw on it and by how much.

What the reserve is

A USDC balance held by the reserve contract on Arc. It is not a treasury with multiple purposes, and it is not a claim on future revenue. It is the balance that exists at the block you check it.

Three properties follow from holding it this way:

It is verifiable. Anyone can read the balance directly from the contract at any block. The figure published on this site is read from the same place.

It is denominated in the settlement asset. The reserve is held in the same asset it pays out in, so its value does not move between the moment an event occurs and the moment settlement executes.

It is finite. There is no facility behind it. When the reserve is drawn down, capacity is reduced until fees replenish it.

How it is funded

A fixed share of protocol fees routes to the reserve at collection. The draft split is 70% reserve, 20% $HERA buyback, 10% operations — draft parameters, subject to change. The mechanics are described in Fee Model.

There is no discretionary funding step and no schedule. The reserve grows when the protocol is used and does not grow when it is not.

How it is drawn down

A settlement is the only thing that removes value from the reserve. Each settlement is bounded twice:

• Per event, at a maximum of 10% of the reserve balance at the time of verification — a draft parameter, subject to change.
• Per holder, at that holder's verified loss.

The per-event cap exists so that one severe event cannot exhaust the reserve and leave nothing for the next one. It has a direct cost: in a large event, holders are settled at less than their verified loss. That trade-off is deliberate, and it is the single most important thing to understand about what coverage is worth.

Published figures

The site publishes four figures, each read from onchain state:

Figure	Meaning
Reserve balance	USDC currently held by the reserve contract
Total settled	Cumulative USDC paid out across all verified events
Events verified	Count of declarations that survived their dispute window
Covered holders	Distinct addresses currently meeting eligibility conditions

Before launch these read Available at launch. They are not estimated or modelled in the meantime.

Checking the reserve yourself

Once the contracts are deployed, the reserve balance is a standard USDC balanceOf call against the reserve contract address. Addresses are published on Contracts. The intent is that nothing on this site needs to be trusted: every figure here should be reproducible from the chain.