Proposal

1. Multisig is to seed a new 50/50 GEAR/stETH pool on Balancer with 0.3% fee, using 300 ETH from strategic round 2 funds and matching value in GEAR from the main treasury.
2. Modify liquidity mining from GIP-36 from 4 months to 6 months, keeping the total quantity the same (13.33m GEAR)
3. Divert 1/3rd of liquidity mining funds from GIP-36 to bribing the Balancer pool through Aura/Hidden Hand.
4. Switch all remaining liquidity mining (from GIP 36 and Cider’d) to bribe vlCVX voters through votium
5. DAO will collect all earned BAL and AURA rewards and lock them, voting for GEAR/WETH emissions with its locked positions.

End result:

1. Multisig owns 600 ETH worth of Balancer GEAR/stETH liquidity.
2. 4.44m GEAR over 6 months is used to bribe Balancer GEAR/stETH liquidity pool
3. 8.88m GEAR over 6 months is used to bribe Curve GEAR/WETH liquidity pool
4. ~15m GEAR over 4 months is also used to bribe Curve GEAR/WETH liquidity pool (from Cider’d)

Justification

Cider’d raised more fees than were anticipated, thus resulting in high APR even at high amounts of liquidity. Keeping cider’d rewards over the 4 month period helps continue to absorb volatility for the new GEAR token, while splitting and extending the current GIP-36 program creates an assurance of rewards continuing after Cider’d rewards are used up (subject to anything that overrides this proposal in the future).

Multiple liquidity sources are necessary to make an oracle feasible. Oracles are necessary for many third party integrations in DeFi, which can bring utility to the GEAR token.

Creating liquidity on Balancer will also diversify partnerships, and the Aura and Bal rewards will create a semi-sustainable baseline of liquidity incentivization for the DAO over time.

stETH is used as a pairing as yield bearing assets recieve rebates from trading fees, which are recyled into bribes for veBAL holders. There are risks in pairing with stETH, but these risks are lessened significantly by the fact that the curve liquidity pool will remain as the largest liquidity pool for GEAR.

Bribing is used due to efficiency. The bribe multiplier is defined as the amount of emissions sent to LPers per $1 in bribes. For CRV it’s ~$1.87 and for Aura it’s $3 - both making bribes a no-brainer.

With the DAO owning initial POL in balancer, it will ensure that excess bribes are not wasted (as they will be returned to the DAO). Additionally, this would allow the DAO to build an Aura position that can be used to create additional rewards for LPers (including the DAO itself). The position would be worth the stake (600 ETH proposed) x the APR (~100% in current Curve v2 pool), and could be used to justify reducing liquidity mining expenses in the future.

Execution

Prior to executing this proposal, the following must happen:

1. A DAO contributor must get a proposal passed for a Curve and Convex gauge for GEAR/WETH (in progress)
2. A DAO contributor must seed a GEAR/WETH pool on Balancer, here.
3. A DAO contributor must get a proposal passed for a BAL and AURA gauge for GEAR/WETH, following the process here: https://forum.balancer.fi/t/instructions-overview/2674
4. A DAO contributor will need to contact votium to get GEAR enabled as a valid bribe token: https://docs.votium.app/explainers/briber-manual, as well as contact Hidden Hand (Redacted) for the same reason.

Additionally, DAO contributors should seek to get both GEAR pools adopted into various aggregation services such as Matcha, Paraswap, 1inch, etc.

Multisig Bribing Instructions

2. Every 2-week epoch, the multisig simply needs to deposit the required reward amount to votium (for the Curve pool): https://votium.app/ (or for tracking purposes, could do the Cider’d and normal LM bribes separately)
3. Every 2-week epoch, the multisig simply needs to deposit the required reward amount to Hidden Hand (for the Balancer pool): https://hiddenhand.finance/aura?slug=aura

Note hidden hand and votium are utilized due to simplicity. Other bribe options exist, including Paladin and StakeDAO solutions to bribing veCRV holders. A future proposal could suggest switching Votium bribes to one of these platforms. This proposal could come at any time - it’s a trivial task for the multisig to switch sending bribes from Votium to another platform, so the majority of the work is explaining to the DAO how it works and why it is better.

Voting

Voting will be simple “for” or “against” the full plan with an “abstain” option.

Voting is ranked choice:

1. Do All
2. Do All Except Deposit Treasury Funds
3. Do Only Curve Bribes (Nothing Balancer Related)
4. Do Something Else/Keep As Is