Although a smaller proposal, [REDACTED] is proposing a significant shift in their bribe rewards. Hidden Hand allows users to receive bribes for voting on specific gauges. However, many bribes go unclaimed for long periods, with the funds remaining trapped in the RewardDistributor. As such, this proposal recommends that [REDACTED] create a process wherein any unclaimed bribes older than 90 days are reclaimed by the protocol and used to re-bribe the same gauge – if [REDACTED] can’t reuse the bribes on the same pool; the funds will go to [REDACTED] where the DAO will use them to bribe gauges in the interests of [REDACTED]. There are currently $2.2M in unclaimed bribes, which although a small amount, could still be put to better use as incentives for more active voters. Readers should be aware of this potential change in the protocol to ensure they don’t lose any accumulated bribes.
Ribbon Finance is considering a proposal to merge their Ribbon and Aevo projects under a single brand and to swap existing RBN tokens for a new token. The team initially developed Ribbon Finance as a DOV protocol that offered various different strategies. Later, the team built Aevo, a derivatives dedicated L2 focused on option and perp trading. This proposal would merge Ribbon Finance into Aevo to make Aevo a DeFi super app that offers a whole basket of derivatives and yield products in a single protocol. As part of the merge, Ribbon and Aevo would re-structure its governance and tokenomics – including completely mothballing the existing RBN tokens for a new AEVO token.
The proposer lays out a few essential steps for folding Ribbon into Aevo. First, the protocol will launch a new token AEVO. AEVO will govern the Aevo product and have a 1B supply, and notably, investor, team, and treasury allocations will remain the same as RBN’s, and vesting will extend for one year to ensure their alignment with the protocol’s success. Existing RBN holders can transfer their RBN tokens to the new AEVO tokens at 1:1. This transition plan means that AEVO will come to market with 70% of its supply already circulating with few upcoming supply shocks. Regardless of what readers think of Ribbon transitioning to Aevo, this is a critical re-brand and shift in the mission of the protocol. The protocol and token are moving from a specific derivative product to a generalist derivatives offering – a much larger market. And, as most RBN tokens are already circulating, AEVO won’t have the usual upcoming supply shocks that provide so much sell pressure on the token.
The UNI Token Question, Again.
A Uniswap Foundation member has asked that MichaeljCohen.eth post a thread in the Uniswap forum to begin a discussion on changing UNI’s token model for the upcoming V4 of the protocol. Much of the debate around UNI’s utility has centered on a fee switch and revenue sharing to token holders. According to the proposal, Uniswap’s V4 makes a fee switch and revenue sharing unenforceable, making the past conversations moot.
Rather than propose a fee switch or revenue sharing, Cohen instead proposes that the UNI token become a main asset pair for Uniswap liquidity pools, much like BNT was for Bancor. Currently, most token pairs trade against ETH. With staking becoming popular, ETH/Token liquidity pools have too much opportunity cost due to ETH’s yield and deflation – ETH has become too precious to be a liquidity pair. Using UNI as a ‘liquidity connector’ has some advantages over ETH. For example, it correlates more to long-tail assets than ETH, so that UNI pairs may suffer less IL. Additionally, the proposal details the creation of a new Uniswap Credit Facility (UCF) hook that allows LPs to borrow UNI for pools to help spur the adoption of the token in this way. And finally, the proposal recommends Uniswap leverage its $2B UNI treasury to create incentive programs with partner protocols to incentivize LPs to use UNI as a trading pair.
This model is a massive deviation from Uniswaps current token model – UNI’s only current utility is governance. The community is unlikely to adopt this proposal due to its complexity and departure from the existing model. But, I recommend people follow this thread as UNI will eventually need to adapt to different models due to pressure from the community and token holders, and this thread has a lot of exciting ideas. It could be the start of a more robust token plan.