RGP-24: Ribbon Lend Liquidity Mining Program

Summary

In February we posted RGP-9: Ribbonomics [1] in which we detailed plans for Ribbon’s tokenomics, including plans for RBN liquidity mining rewards to vault depositors. We set out to distribute 250K RBN per week over the course of 6 months, after which point we would revisit the emission schedule. It has been 6 months since the first emissions and we suggest to make the following amendment:

  1. Keep 250K RBN inflation per week for the next three months
  2. Redirect a % of RBN inflation towards Ribbon Lend [2] pools (Ribbon Lend Details [3])
  3. Add an additional 100K RBN inflation per week as auxiliary RBN to maintain a floor of 100K RBN inflation per week across all Ribbon Options vaults.

Proposal

The current liquidity mining program initially set out to attract more TVL to Ribbon Finance vaults. While it effectively achieved that goal initially, the RBN LM program is no longer attracting new capital / depositors at the same rate. The main beneficiaries are the same group of depositors. This is partially part of a broader trend of a shift of attention and capital away from crypto in the past couple of months - many bluechip protocols are experiencing a similar trend.

We believed that this may have been a possibility back in February due to the reason above and others, which is why we made it clear in the original Ribbonomics proposal that we would re-evaluate the effectiveness of the emissions in six months time and that the size of the emissions are subject to change. This was public before RBN locking became available.

It seems clear that the RBN incentives will be of better use in bootstrapping new products, including Ribbon Lend pools. We suggest to maintain 250K RBN inflation per week between the Ribbon vaults and lend pools but dynamically rebalance the allocation between the two to maintain a 5% RBN APR on Ribbon Lend (in addition to the supply APR). As Ribbon Lend TVL gradually grows, more of the 250K RBN inflation will be directed towards Ribbon Lend to maintain the same APR across all market maker pools.

However, we will impose a floor of 100K RBN inflation per week - the allocation towards Ribbon Options vaults cannot go any lower than 40% of original emissions per week. This will be reached if Ribbon Lend’s TVL surpasses ~$35M, at which point we will tap into the auxiliary 100K RBN emissions to maintain the floor - making the total available emissions per week 350K RBN depending on Ribbon Lend TVL.

Here is a chart of allocations between Ribbon Vault and Ribbon Lend based on Ribbon Lend TVL.

After three months, we will create a new governance proposal and reassess the RBN inflation per week and the allocation between Ribbon vaults and lend pools.

Impact on RBN lockers

We recognize that this approach has ramifications on the ve system and specifically veRBN holders. If this were implemented veRBN holders will have voting power on increasingly less RBN rewards. After three months, veRBN holders will be able to vote on Ribbon Lend pools exactly the way they do for Ribbon Vaults to maintain the same voting power (250K RBN per week). This means it will be possible for all emissions to once again be redirected towards the options vaults.

Conclusion

This proposal is a simple and temperate approach towards gradually tapering rewards for current Ribbon vault depositors whilst gradually ramping up rewards to attract lenders for Ribbon Lend.

This is achieved without significantly increasing the emissions per week - maintaining 250K RBN emissions per week up to $35M TVL in Ribbon Lend and extending that to a potential 350K RBN per week. This dilutes the circulating supply by at most 0.85% (4.34524 wk/mo * 3 months * 350K RBN/wk) / 534,555,247 RBN circulating.

There is clear product market fit in the Ribbon Lend product - attracting almost $10M within 48 hours of launch. The rewards will help scale the product and keep the rates competitive.

Voting

This proposal will be posted on the forum for 1 week prior to voting. Voting will then be open on Snapshot for 5 days. This vote will be a single choice vote. You may vote on the proposal by selecting “Yes, let’s do it” or “No, this is not the way”.

References:

  1. RGP-9: Ribbonomics
  2. Ribbon Lend
  3. Ribbon Lend Details
2 Likes

This seems like a good idea!
I like the approach of providing a stable lend RBN APR.

Is TVL the only KPI we are using to asses the success of this (and the former) LM campaigns?
Seems like we should also be using more user focused metrics.

  • first time depositors
  • user retention
  • liquidity stickiness compared to market wide liquidity.

Feel free to reach out to me directly if you need help surfacing any of these metrics.

While I understand the excitement about the new product.
I would be cautious about starting the LM campaign directly after release.
Paying users blurs the signals of pmf a lot, it might be better to open it up for a month and see how much organic demand there is before attracting mercenary capital. Given the lowish APR though this might not be a big concern in the current market, nevertheless it will still obfuscate your business signals.

These are only minor concerns so I’ll be voting ‘Yes’ if the proposal goes live as is.

-Rob

1 Like