Some upcoming changes to our reward programs will be covered in this article, including adjustments to Lazy River (vePERP staking) and the Pool Party (liquidity mining), as well as the sunsetting of the referral program.
These adjustments are necessary to ensure the sustainability of the reward programs, in particular to keep the Pool Party running for as long as possible and to make way for some larger updates.
Let’s now take a look at the changes for each of the respective reward programs, the first of which will begin to take place in just under one month’s time.
Pool Party
A reduction in the liquidity mining rewards for the Pool Party initiative will go into effect from Monday, June 19th.
As a result, LPs may receive lower rewards for the liquidity they provide during the week commencing June 12th.
The total amount of PERP tokens paid out to LPs across all markets currently stands at 360,000 PERP per month. Starting on June 19th, this monthly amount will be reduced to 260,000 PERP. OP rewards will remain unchanged at 360,000 per month.
The exact breakdown of the Pool Party rewards adjustments is shown by the table below, indicating the amount of PERP tokens allocated to each market every week:
Lazy River
A reduction in vePERP rewards for Lazy River will go into effect as of Thursday, June 22nd.
The token emissions were intended to incentivize more stakers to join Lazy River and increase the locked portion of the token supply. The intention was always to eventually reduce the vePERP rewards that boost the fee distribution to zero. We’ve seen great progress so far, with almost 15% of the total token supply locked into vePERP and earning a sustainable yield.
Lazy River stakers are also enjoying decent rewards from the USDC fee distribution alone (above 14% APR!). We’ll continue working on making this stablecoin yield as attractive as possible and it’s now a good time to trim the rewards paid from token emissions (vePERP).
As there’s more progress with the Hot Tub vaults (as well as other areas such as marketing and partnerships) to increase trading volume, our aim is to boost the amount of USDC that vePERP stakers can expect from the weekly fee distributions.
However, the portion of rewards coming from token emissions is set to be reduced from the current weekly cap of 25,000 vePERP to 15,000 vePERP from June 22nd.
Referral Program
The referral program will be discontinued and the last distribution of rewards will take place on Monday, June 12th.
The referral program has not been that successful in increasing the amount of locked PERP and has had little impact on the volume generated by referral partners.
As a result of the factors mentioned above, and because these types of rewards programs in general are susceptible to misuse by people who farm the rewards, the decision has been made to sunset the referral program.
After the last referral rewards have been paid out on June 12th, any remaining vePERP that you’ve earned can be claimed using the page linked below:
You may be wondering if a referral program will ever return to Perp? It’s possible, and we’re currently working on a new system that will prevent the farming of referral rewards.
A reduction in rewards is not something that our community may want to hear. But these adjustments help to extend the lifespan of these programs for as long as possible. Ultimately, optimizing the reward programs at this stage helps to prepare the protocol for a future without any incentives at all (something that’s inevitable for existing DeFi protocols).