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Liquidity Rental

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

How a rental works​

Partner protocol  ──bribes──►  Gauge  ◄──votes──  bWRN holders
                                  │
                                  ▼
                              Emissions
                                  │
                                  ▼
                              LPs (deposit liquidity)
                                  │
                                  ▼
                            Trading depth

Step by step:

  1. Deposit a bribe. A partner protocol calls bribe(gauge, token, amount) before the vote snapshot. Common bribe tokens: USDC, the partner's own token, or any ERC-20.
  2. Voters allocate weight. bWRN holders see the pending bribes per gauge and allocate their votes to maximize their per-vote payout (bribes + expected fees) for the epoch.
  3. Snapshot and distribution. At epoch close, votes settle, the gauge receives its share of emissions, and bribes 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. The partner has its rental.
  5. Repeat next epoch if the partner wants to maintain depth.

Why rental is cheaper than perpetual incentives​

The rental price for one epoch of depth is the bribe required to attract a target vote share. That vote share unlocks emissions worth multiples of the bribe — voters compete on the bribe-to-vote ratio, and emissions act as a multiplier on the partner's spend.

In rough terms:

Effective LP yield  =  (Emissions to gauge + Fees - Protocol rake)  /  Liquidity in pool
Partner rental cost =  Bribe paid this epoch
LP capital attracted ≈  (Effective LP yield) × (LP risk-tolerance)

A partner pays the bribe once per epoch, only when they want depth. They do not commit token supply to a multi-year emissions schedule on their own treasury, and they do not need to wind down a program if their priorities change — they just stop bribing.

Bribe mechanics​

  • Bribe deposit window. Bribes must be deposited before the snapshot for the epoch. Late bribes carry over to the next epoch.
  • Refunds. Bribes are non-refundable once deposited. If no voter allocates weight to the gauge, the bribes 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 bribes denominated in many different tokens simultaneously. Voters claim each token separately.
  • Whitelisting. By default any ERC-20 can be used as a bribe token. Governance may whitelist or blacklist specific tokens for the bribe market (e.g. to filter out tokens with malicious transfer hooks).

Strategic notes​

  • Cold-start. Early in Warren's life, total bWRN supply is small and bribe-to-vote ratios are favorable for partners willing to bribe first. This is the period where rental cost is structurally lowest.
  • Bribe pricing. A useful first-pass calculation: the bribe per epoch should be priced against the equivalent cost of running a native liquidity-mining program for the same depth-week. Most partners find the rental considerably cheaper.
  • Aggregation. Third-party bribe-aggregation interfaces are expected to emerge — they let partners auction bribe deposits and let voters auto-route to the highest-yield gauges.

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