PROPOSAL

Increase GEAR/wETH liquidity curve v2 pool mining rewards from 3.33m GEAR/month to 6.66m GEAR/month. The rewards will run until the end of the year unless replaced by a new tokenomics model.

CONTEXT

But we just changed this in GIP-49! (Context)

Yes. Essentially in [GIP-49] We f*ked around and found out.

Since GIP-49, the previous veCRV voters have left the pool, and altcoins have lost value vs ETH. It is a real possibility that if nothing changes GEAR/wETH liquidity could drop below $1m. This is equivalent to 4 months of diesel LM - ie, could create significant sell pressure. Additionally, $1m liquidity is somewhat of a mental barrier of “legitimacy” for liquidity. Increasing the rewards back to 6.66m GEAR/month can shore up the liquidity to weather further adverse conditions while still representing a minor net increase to liquidity mining emissions.

For reference - diesel LM program is currently 23m gear/month. This proposal would represent a net 12% increase to the liquidity mining program across diesel pools and GEAR/wETH pools.

Alternative Configurations

There are two potential alternatives: Switching the rewards to veCRV or vlCVX bribes, or switching liquidity to a balancer boosted pool.

Switching rewards to veCRV or vlCVX bribes would offer a slightly multiplier (historically around 1-1.5x) on efficiency, however it would mean farmers are receiving CRV and CVX, and voters recieve GEAR, thus making LPers unable to accumulate GEAR thru LM. This is a smaller form of f*k around and find out, but ultimately only represents a marginal increase for once again potentially unknown downsides.

Switching to a boosted pool could potentially achieve the same liquidity with 40% less emissions (slightly better outcome than the veCRV/vlCVX bribe multiplier) . However, this would require existing LPs to migrate to Balancer and accept the new APR, and also have confidence that nothing else will change in the near future. Usually getting new liquidity requires boosted APR for a period of time. Given there are ongoing discussions around potential locked liquidity 80/20 pools and other tokenomics, less change is better and liquidity providers will be far more likely to remain in the curve pool, and likely accept a slightly reduced APR, than they would be to migrate to a new pool with only a slightly higher APR. Therefore, once again the potential downside of f*king around and finding out is not worthwhile.

Voting

Simple for/against/abstain.