Proposal: Bribe the alUSD3CRV gauge on curve.fi.f
Recently, Andre Cronje has released a dapp called bribe.curve.finance. This allows you to put bribes or bounties up for veCRV voters in order for them to be incentivised to vote for gauge weights (which determine farming rewards per pool) and other governance proposals in Curve DAO.
The idea seemed like a cute experiment, but recently, our friends over at abracadabra.money have offered robust bribes which has allowed their gauge to now get 5.5% of the CRV rewards. Scoopy Trooples had incentivised approximately $6,000 value in bribes over the last two weeks. Our total votes and rewards increased mildly, but nowhere near as drastically as abracadabra’s MIM.
Therefore, I propose that we use 15% of the weekly farming rewards (400 ALCX) to bribe veCRV voters to vote for our gauge. Currently, the alUSD3CRV farm makes 11.6% in ALCX and 2.03%-5.08% in CRV. Should this bribe allow us to match abracadabra’s success with 5% of veCRV voters voting for our gauge, then it would roughly double the yield on CRV. If that happens, the range for the CRV rewards would go to 4-10%. A 10% reduction in ALCX rewards would mean that ALCX APR would go from 11.6% to 9.86%. At the base reward rate for Curve of 4%, that would put minimum APR at roughly the same level as it is now. That said, people with veCRV and all stakers on Convex get boosted rewards. The boosted CRV rewards would also mean boosted CVX rewards. Currently, we are projected to earn 18.5% on Convex. Around 7% of our yield on convex comes from CRV and CVX, and if our CRV yields would double, then so would our CVX yields.
When you take those factors into consideration, we can have a net increase in yield by at least a few % points while not emitting any extra ALCX in the process. On Convex, our yields could jump from 18% to the mid 20% level.
In order to implement this, we will initially borrow 400 ALCX from the treasury, and then we will adjust the farming reward rate and reimburse the treasury for facilitating this action. Then we will use 400 ALCX a week (of the roughly 2700/week current allotment) to bribe the alUSD gauge.
Reasons for:
-will likely increase yield without increasing emissions
-higher yields will help promote better peg stability
-will provide useful data should we pursue this path for other assets on Curve
-more farming rewards in the form of CRV and CVX
Reasons against:
-there is no guarantee that this will result in higher yields
-bribing voters “feels wrong”
-less ALCX for those who are specifically farming for it (and not the yields)