Pool Voting & Incentives

Incentives are the economic driver to the Pearl ecosystem

By locking $PEARL for $vePEARL, users earn the right to claim incentives and fees by voting on the platform's gauges.

Gauges determine the amount of emissions distributed to the various liquidity pools for each Epoch on the DEX. Pools with more votes earn a greater proportion of $PEARL emissions for that Epoch.

Pool Voting

Epochs begin on Thursdays at 00:00 UTC and for one week. At the end of the Epoch, all incentives and trading fees are distributed to voters who accrue these rewards for the gauges (pools) they have voted for. Emissions are distributed proportionally to the staked liquidity providers based on the total percentage of votes in the epoch.

Projected emissions can be calculated using the following formula:

emissions(PAIR)=% of total votes÷100%emissions(PAIR) = \% \ of \ total \ votes ÷ 100 \%

In Epoch 1, 2,600,000$PEARLwill be distributed. If 10% of all votes are allocated to the USTB/PEARL pair, that pool will receive 260,000 $PEARL distributed linearly throughout the epoch.

  • You must vote weekly (or use an optimizer) to be eligible for fees and incentives.

  • If a voter fails to vote in any given week, they will not receive the rewards for that week.

  • Voters can vote and change their vote at any time.

Account-Based Voting

Pearl v2 implements a shift from token-based voting to account-based voting.

Previously, users had to select the token they wished to vote with. Under the new system, users now vote directly with their connected wallet, eliminating the need to choose a specific token for voting.

Voting power is assigned per account by the $vePEARL contract, streamlining the voting process.

Delegation of Voting Power

By default, each account self-delegates its voting power. However in Pearl v2, users can now delegate their voting power to another account.

Incentives

Incentives are benefits to $vePEARL voters who vote for a particular liquidity pool, sending a larger share of weekly emissions (higher APR) to that pool which in turn makes providing liquidity more beneficial to users, thus increasing liquidity for those projects.

Incentives to $vePEARL voters are derived from two primary sources:

Dynamic Incentives

As covered in the Pearl Flywheel, the off-chain yield from tokenized RWAs is skimmed from entering the liquidity pool and allocated to that pool's weekly incentive budget. This provides a projectable weekly incentive budget for each pool that increases as pools expand.

Protocols and Other Third-Parties

Protocols and even individual users are able to add an incentive for any pair on the platform, provided that they meet the pairing and token whitelisting requirements. The incentive marketplace is public and permissionless.

Incentives can be offered anytime within an epoch, held in escrow until its end, and collected by voters as a lump sum afterwards.

Claiming Incentives

External incentive rewards in Pearl v2 are claimable after the Epoch has ended (n+1). (Epochs increment right after 23:59 UTC each Wednesday.)

incentive claim timeline:

  • A new epoch starts Thursday (00:00 UTC)

  • Incentives are deposited at any point in the Epoch

  • Voters vote for their preferred pools

  • Once the epoch ends (each Thursday), users are able to claim incentives rewards from the UI

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