CIP#28 - What token should admin fees be distributed to veCRV holders?

I am not opposed to either method but I would like to propose some ideas that could potentially incentivize people to get paid in CRV as opposed to a stable coin. I think that community members that are looking at Curve as a long term investment would want to be paid in CRV as opposed to a stable coin since they see the potential of the CRV token in the future. On the other hand, it appears to me that the preference of large veCRV holders is to get paid in a stable coin as they are looking for the quickest ROI and might not have the best interest of the platform in mind.

With that said, my understanding is that our treasury has 151,515,151 CRV tokens which is roughly 5% of 3.03B (total supply of CRV). My proposal is to NOT buy CRV from the markets for now (until we figure out how to better solve the front running problem (I have some ideas around this but thatā€™s for another post)) and instead use the treasury that we have to distribute CRV to individuals that prefer to be paid in CRV (as opposed to a stablecoin). I think that this is beneficial to us because:

  1. We avoid the ā€œbuying CRV from the marketsā€ implementation in the short term which seems to be cumbersome. This will give us extra time to find a better way to solve this.
  2. It is to our benefit that we diversify the reserves so that we are not holding 100% curve (donā€™t put all your eggs in one basket). In the future, I envision the reserves holding a proportion of funds in CRV, stable coins, gold, and other assets. This is another topic for an improvement proposal.

Now that I have established the above, the idea is the following:

  1. Individuals that would like to receive CRV as a distribution can get CRV from the reserves directly. It looks like we have a chainlink price oracle that we can use to get the CRV price when they decide to claim. The amount of CRV that they receive would be based on how much they can purchase at the current price using their accumulated total earnings when they claim. I also would like to provide an incentive to individuals that are claiming in CRV and perhaps that is a percentage that is somehow tied to their current veCRV holdings. I am not sure what that is yet but I think it is beneficial for the platform to provide this incentive as these individuals are taking a risk on CRV and should be rewarded for it. Alternatively, if we want to make this easier for developers then we just make it a flat reward percentage. Once they claim CRV, we move their portions of the admin fee in what ever coins we have to the reserves.

  2. For folks that are looking to claim in a stable coin, ideally we provide two options for choosing that are the most liquid (e.g. USDT,USDC) or just vote on a single stable coin as a community to make things easier. I am assuming that we can use our own platform for the conversion and deduct the fees from their portion (this pays it forward back to us).

The idea above is not much different than the Celsius savings platform. Those that decide to get paid in kind (token that they are depositing) get a lower percentage than those that decide to get paid in CEL (the native token of the platform). At some point, I think we should also figure out a distribution schedule (4 times a year, twice a year, once a year, etcā€¦) so that folks can set their preference (paid in stable coin or in CRV) and we take care of doing this automatically on the distribution date. This makes this predictable for individuals (tax purposes) and stops the annoying questions in telegram about ā€œwhen distributionā€.

2 Likes

According to my understanding of proposed EU Crypto Regulation providing interest/rewards as a stable coin may contravene these regulations. I think it would be prudent to plan ahead for when these regulations are in force, which probably tilts the balance towards CRV-based rewards.

4 Likes

First of all, I do prefer receiving CRV for all the reasons that were previously discussed of which the comment just made by freshaspect has me concerned about the longer-term ramifications of paying out in stable coin. The question I have is around why it would be difficult to follow through with the CRV distribution plan since this difficulty would likely be a one-time event (if I understand things) as the accumulated funds would be exchanged for CRV. Granted this is non-trivial but could be set to purchase CRV in tranches of random amounts and time intervals with some jitter over time. I think this would be the pattern going forward as the fees would be exchanged as they accrue and not allowed to accumulate to an unwieldy amount. I donā€™t think there is a specific deadline to be met for payout although for most folks including me the sooner the better.

4 Likes

I donā€™t think front running is so much of a problem so long as you reference the price oracle to make sure the price you pay is within acceptable bounds.

But I do like the idea of putting the community fund to work. Especially if it makes the exchange process simpler, as the whole process is handled internally.

The cool thing I want to emphasize about this idea Is that the community fund would then assume control of the LP tokens earned by admin trade fees, so it would be earning CRV and yield on token swaps. If we made our community fund financially self sustaining, obviously that could be really helpful down the line with our war chest.

4 Likes

I think if we distribute in CRV there is a huge gas fee involved(if you buy each transaction), or you will have front running (if you batch buy).

Idea: why donā€™t we create a fee-accure pool, where we just throw the different LP tokens that accure (low gas cost), and only veCRV owners could withdraw from this pool based on their veCRV amount.
Advantage:

  1. Low gas costs, because protocol does not buy anything.
  2. Low development cost: current pool implementation can be used, with some small changes.
  3. Front running is not an issue.
  4. Users can decide what token they actually want (LP, or underlying).
  5. There is an inherent mechanism in current pool implementation to handle popular tokens withdrawal. So whoever wants to withdraw popular LP, will be penalized, whoever wants to get less popular will be rewarded.

Excuse me if all the above was obvious to everyone but me! :slight_smile:

2 Likes

r001ā€¦I like the idea and thought about a similar construct but I would like to see something set up to create a sink for all the CRV that is emitted every day that is suppressing its value. Hopefully, at some point, there will be enough interest and volume to absorb it all and more but thatā€™s not happening now. I would prefer a solution that creates a sink to take the pressure off of the price and therefore prefer CRV which I presume most veCRV owners would hold ontoā€¦provided it has a chance of appreciating.

1 Like

@JohnnySokko Well at the end of the day, that CRV will end up on the market anyway, it would be a temporary tank, so it will actually not any help. But if we so much want to have some CRV involved: lets put the accure-pool along with the rest of the pools to receive CRV rewards. veCRV owners could vote on it on regular votes. This way a lot of the CRV supply could go to this pool. And it would take an even better supercomputer to calculate tokenomics. :slight_smile: And this way we could satisfy pretty much everyone. CRV enthusiasts can get CRV, LP people can get LP, and it would even be feasible, unlike many other solutions.

Please donā€™t crv. LP or any stable

Stable has won this poll, part 2 is here: sCIP#1 - What stable coin should admin fees be distributed in?