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Liquidity Rental

External protocols use Warren's vote incentive market to rent liquidity by the epoch. Instead of issuing perpetual liquidity-mining rewards on their own balance sheet, a protocol deposits vote incentives into the gauge of the pool where it wants depth. Voters allocate weight to that gauge in exchange for the vote incentives; emissions flow to the gauge; LPs follow the emissions; depth materializes.

How a rental works​

Rental flywheelvalue rotates clockwise · one full turn = one epochProtocolsdeposit vote incentivesbWRN votersclaim incentives · voteLPssupply liquidityTraderspay swap feesvote incentivesemissionsdepthfees · usageWarren poolGauge

Step by step:

  1. Deposit vote incentives. A protocol transfers tokens to the gauge's reward depot. Common vote incentive tokens: USDC, the protocol's own token, or any ERC-20.
  2. Voters allocate weight. bWRN holders see the pending vote incentives per gauge and allocate their votes to maximize their per-vote payout (vote incentives + expected fees) for the epoch.
  3. Snapshot and distribution. At epoch close, votes settle, the gauge receives its share of emissions, and vote incentives are distributed pro-rata among voters who supported the gauge.
  4. LPs follow. With emissions flowing into the gauge, LPs supply liquidity to capture WRN rewards. The pool deepens, and the protocol has rented depth for the epoch.
  5. Repeat next epoch if the protocol wants to maintain depth.

A protocol pays the vote incentive once per epoch, only when it wants depth. It does not commit token supply to a multi-year emissions schedule on its own treasury, and it does not need to wind down a program if its priorities change — it just stops depositing incentives.

Strategic Launch Program

Warren's Strategic Launch Program matches qualifying vote incentive campaigns from the 95M WRN Vote Incentives Matching allocation. Protocols that pre-commit before public launch receive 1.5x matching for the first 7 weekly epochs after launch; standard qualifying campaigns receive 1x matching.

Vote incentive mechanics​

  • Vote incentive deposit window. Vote incentives must be deposited before the snapshot for the epoch. Late incentives carry over to the next epoch.
  • Refunds. Vote incentives are non-refundable once deposited. If no voter allocates weight to the gauge, the incentives are still distributed — to the empty set, which means they sit in the contract until governance acts.
  • Multiple tokens per gauge. A gauge can hold vote incentives denominated in many different tokens simultaneously. Voters claim each token separately.
  • Whitelisting. By default any ERC-20 can be used as a vote incentive token. Governance may whitelist or blacklist specific tokens for the vote incentive market (e.g. to filter out tokens with malicious transfer hooks).

See Gauges for what a gauge is and Voting for how vote weight is computed and rewarded.