August Update + CVX Voting!

Convex Finance
5 min readAug 3, 2021

Plenty has happened since we launched Convex Finance in May, and we wanted to give a comprehensive update on everything that’s changed and what’s coming next. Additionally, we’ll provide some insight into the upcoming CVX token voting system and how that will work.

  • We’ve seen TVL between $3.5B-$4B for over a month, and approaching the $5 billion mark as of this writing! Really great news for cvxCRV and CVX stakers! Platform revenue recently crossed the $50 million mark in under 3 months, and we now have over 70M CRV locked!
From Defi Pulse
  • Our Twitter account recently passed 10,000 followers, and our Discord is nearly 4000 members strong. The community continues to grow and we look forward to more users every day!
convexfinance.com/claim
  • We’ve implemented a number of UI improvements, including adding a “Claim and Stake” function. This makes it easier to compound your staked positions on cvxCRV and CVX, and also saves on gas costs.
  • We continue to support all new pools on Curve.fi, most recently the tricrypto pool. This pool has seem immense popularity and bodes well for future multi-collateral liquidity pools on Curve. We’re excited for what’s to come here.

Protocol Collaborations

Frax Finance

Frax Finance has deployed a portion of their treasury to the FRAX pool on Convex Finance. They’ve committed to holding/staking their earned cvxCRV and CVX rewards for the long term, and work to align incentives for both protocols. We’re excited to have Frax Finance engaged in the success of Convex Finance!

BadgerDao

The team at BadgerDao deployed new vaults purpose built for Convex Finance. BadgerDao’s Helper Vaults can be used to auto-compound your staked cvxCRV and CVX earnings. Users can also choose to use any of BadgerDao’s 8 other setts that take advantage of Convex rewards (CRV, CVX), as well as BADGER tokens.

Other Integrations

OlympusDao

With OlympusDao’s passing of OIP-14, excess treasury funds (FRAX tokens) will be deployed into Convex Finance’s liquidity pools to start earning trading fees, CVX, and CRV. OlympusDao hopes to deploy more capital from their treasury to Convex liquidity pools in the future, and maintain a CVX position.

What’s Next? Well, voting!

*drumroll*

Voting with your CVX Tokens

At launch, we expressed our intent to allow CVX holders to dictate how Convex Finance used its significant (and growing) veCRV voting power in the weekly Curve.Fi gauge weight votes. The aim is to decentralize the protocol and give the token holders a say in how Curve.Fi rewards are distributed amongst the different liquidity pools. We also plan to hold votes for any Curve.fi governance proposals that arise.

We’re glad to say we are in the final stages of releasing the voting system. We anticipate launching soon, and we’ll keep the community updated with the latest regarding an official launch time.

For now, we want to cover some basics on how the voting system will work in practice:

  • Voting will take place using Snapshot.
  • Gauge weight votes will be bi-weekly. Other Curve.fi governance votes will be addressed as they arise.
  • Curve ownership governance votes have a quorum of 20%; Curve parameter governance votes have a quorum of 10%; gauge weight votes will not have a quorum.
  • In order to vote, you must lock your CVX tokens for a fixed time period. Locked tokens will be inaccessible until the time period has passed (more on this in the next section).
  • Individual CVX holders may spread their votes among multiple pools in gauge weight votes.
  • There will be minimum and maximum gauge weight allocations for Convex Finance’s veCRV voting power. These thresholds are safeguards to ensure voting power is used effectively across the system.

A more in depth explanation and rules can be found on our documentation page here.

Locking CVX Tokens

Convex Finance has opted to require a time lock on CVX tokens that wish to participate in any platform votes. This helps ensure the most committed and engaged users are the ones helping shape the votes regarding Convex Finance’s gauge weights and Curve.fi governance votes.

You will need to lock your CVX tokens in order to participate in any votes.

  • CVX tokens used for voting will be locked for 16 weeks. Voting weight will be determined by the amount of CVX tokens deposited (see next section on Boost Mechanic)
  • Deposited tokens will be split into weekly lock groups which will expire together.
  • Upon lock expiry, you can either withdraw or re-lock.

To further incentivize users to participate in platform votes, CVX tokens locked in the voting contract will still receive the 5% platform fee as if their tokens were staked, as well as an additional 1% fee for locking their tokens.

  • Platform fees will increase nominally to compensate for the additional fee going to locked CVX tokens. (Will be raised from 16% to 17%)
  • CVX tokens remaining in expired locks will continue to accumulate these fees, but will eventually be put up for bounty. Any user can “kick” an expired user’s locks after a grace period of 4 weeks have passed, and claim a fee paid for by the inactive CVX token holder.

Boost Mechanic

CVX tokens can be ‘spent’ to receive a multiplier on your locked CVX rewards, and also increase your weight of your CVX token voting power. These are spent while depositing and only applied to the newly deposited tokens.

‘Spent’ CVX tokens will be directed to the treasury. These funds will remain in the treasury to be used for future incentives.

At launch, the boost mechanic will be disabled. It will be up to the community as to when this should be turned on and with what parameters.

When?

We are working hard to finalize the voting system. We want CVX holders to have their say as soon as possible to further decentralize Convex Finance. We’ll announce when it’s ready, but in the meantime, you can follow along in our chats and check updates on our Github.

Design work in progress

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