The issue here is you are requesting grant for a product that will be launched in the future, I don’t think asking a grant for an unproven product is such a good idea. We don’t know how the derivatives platform ChronosX will perform in the future, judgement can be made about it only after its been online for a substantial period of time.
In the TAG you have mentioned that, protocols are required to consistently bribe and align themselves - We have time and again seen that this has not been the case with any protocol, the protocol shall migrate to a Dex where it can spend the absolute minimum to maintain liquidity, with so many options around in arbitrum it’s difficult to see why they would choose Chronos, as others too are making similar claims of bribe matching.
Mostly i think using Velodrome and OP ecosystem as a comparison is not logical, OP had no native DEXs when velodrome launched plus there was no curve or balancer, what I am saying is they had no competition and they took max advantage of that. That’s not the case here.
veCHR and ARB incentives through our lock boosts will now be open to both users and protocols under the levels described from the summary photo attached. Through a more accessibe barrier to entry, we hope this will support a wider range of users to access incentives through the Chronos TAG infrastructure.
Furthermore, by not directly rewarding LPs with ARB this is a much more sustainable and capital efficient approach to support network growth. We hope to extend this programme beyond the grant period and hope the communitiy sees the importance of using incentives in this way to ensure sustained long-term growth for Arbitrum.
My main issues here is that so much of this grant is centered around a product (ChronoX) which is effectively a white-label product created by another team entirely (Symmio). This ChronoX doesn’t even exist yet. We all know how launches go, much less entirely new products, and Chronos has had some extremely rough launches. It’s stated that “100% of fee revenue will buy back CHR.” and that grant funds are going to be used for the marketing as a “most profitable traders leaderboard.” I say cut this ChronosX part entirely and rebalance the requested amount towards other parts.
Using grants for incentivizing people to lock CHR is effectively just using grants to pump CHR. These tiered “lock more and we’ll boost your bribes more” amounts is simply marketing.
I’d like to see a ve33 project get bribe matching grants as an interlocular with the traditional LP incentives route, maybe Chronos can provide that. But this is such a scatter shot of ideas and only a piece of it is really going to growing TVL on Arbitrum.
I have personally had a negative experience with the Chronos security department (if it can be called that).
A month or so ago, I discovered a critical level vulnerability in Chronos’ contracts, that given enough time, could have easily stolen 7 figures of assets from arbitrum users. I first reported the bug to Immunefi, who quickly closed the report as not in scope.
After seeing this, I opened a ticket in the Chronos discord server, at which time the team seemed to be very receptive of my report. However, things got complicated when it was time to pay my bounty.
They began with an extremely low-ball offer of $5,000 ($25,000 less than the minimum for a critical level bounty stated in their immunefi report)
I obviously rejected that offer, and awaited their reply. In the meantime, I answered Chronos community members’ questions about the exploit, until I recieved this message in the bounty group chat.
After much back-and-forth, and help from @Dog, Chronos pawned off the blame to their partner Sphere Finance, who agreed to pay me $20K for the bug. Chronos never offered anything (worth taking) from their end. After that, Chronos banned me from their Discord server and blocked me on Twitter/X.
I have not recieved any response to the above message.
After my experience reporting a critical vulnerability bug, and getting nothing but disdain from Chronos, I believe it is counter-intuitive to provide Chronos with any grant after their inaction to protect their community and Arbitrum users.
Sir they just wanted to provide you with the same rug experience that all users felt
Only team that could manage to raise and skeem 4m on a bear market.
U should have seen the speed my money evaporated with thwm
Using the grant to incentivize locking CHR offers no “boost” to arbitrum liquidity.
With other solid forks(on and off arbitrum), in order to get the highest apr you must lock a certain amount of the token.
The lock and LPs are directly correlated.
With Chronos, it’s maturity based meaning I don’t have to own and lock chr to max out the boost, I just have to wait 12 weeks. I can LP, collect and dump it to zero, relatively risk free. The only benefit (since most users will never have enough votes to compete with protocol votes) of locking is bribes which will come and go based on the partner and their economic situation.
Because of that difference, incentivizing locked chr only boosts tvl for locked chr. If that locked chr meant a boost to the LPs, it could reasonably be said that people would lock for the bonus and add liquidity but in this current form, it doesn’t entice anyone to do anything but lock chr. Where is the connection of “locked chr = more tvl”?
Also I get the comparison to Velodrome, and it worked great for velo likely because there weren’t many options at the time. By the time new dexes showed up, velo had already seated itself.
Hi both, happy to address some comments here that are relevant to the discussion @Smith
CHR locks offer no TVL boost / just pump CHR / better to direct to LPs
I understand that is may be seem this way but this is not the the case. There is no doubt that direct LP incentives are the most inefficient way to drive liquidity. Once the STIP runs out, LPs will go away, the majority of ARB will get dumped, liquidity will go down and Arbitrum is left in the same situation. LPs are transient and that’s ok. How can we make the impact that incentives have to be long-lasting and more than a short term 1:1 conversion from $1 of ARB to $1 of liquidity?
A bribe-for-emissions model is the best way to do that. Defacto buy in means that for each $ of ARB, value must be also provided (bribes + locking CHR that supports LP revenue / supports more TVL + partners be boosted for providing liquidity to encourage more bribes) and so the ecosystem is getting much more revenue/value for each $ of ARB. As we’ve seen with Curve, Convex, Velodrome etc this generates significant value over time and is highly capital efficient.
Locking CHR has important benefits 1) Sustains LP revenue denominated in CHR (therefore we can support more TVL) 2) Sustains partner bribe ROI (encourages more bribes, more locking, more LP revenue, more liquidity) 3) Brings lockers access to real DEX revenue (swap fees / bribes). In fact Chronos has the most attractive veTOKEN marketcap to earnings ratio (https://twitter.com/_Telaga_/status/1708254947681419692) 4) By aligning protocols/users with an interest in the success of Chronos this ensures that the entire ecosystem is embeded into the infrastructure with long-term goals (unlike the goals of LPs) and thus provides a sustainble platform for growth.
This is what is great about the Chronos TAG infrastructure layer as it provides a highly capital efficient and sustainable means to provide incentives for protocols to build liquidity and users to access real revenue. Over the long-term, Arbitrum cannot afford to continue spending ARB through programmes like STIP as this is unsustainable. Chronos can serve as a proof-of-concept for the effectiveness of this model (that also is protective to the ARB token as it’s not directly going to LPs). Importantly, we are building data dashboards that can track this impact. Also ChronoX directly works to support LP revenue (so even more TVL is possible) + to bribe core ecosystem pools (more revenue for veCHR holders / more reasons to lock / more LP revenue / more ARB/ETH liquidity for the network). Robust synergy.
Both parts of the proposal work together to drive innovation, revenue and liquidity
ChronoX
@Smith Only 23% of the grant will be used to fund trader incentives for ChronoX based on PnL. This will help bring genuine traders onto the platfrom, new users onto Arbitrum and is not to fund marketing. There is a lot of text explaining the exchange but we felt it was important to share the details around this exciting innovation for the network. With respect to launching audits are complete. Thena has a working version of this right now (Thena) and in collaboration with with the trading engine providers we can see a clear path for launch (we’ve been working on this for months).
This is a huge problem and should be addressed. If the team isn’t willing to pay a paltry $20,000 for a severe vulnerability how can we all expect them to properly spend the ARB they are granted?
First, I appreciate the explanation. The first part of this could be said about CHR when incentives end. CHR emissions do not end with the ARB incentives, so any amount locked is irrelevant to the amount locked a year from now.
You keep comparing to velodrome stats without mentioning that Velodrome has a non stop injection of incentives. This entire proposal hinges on the fact that “velodrome did it” without acknowledging that Velodrome still receives and distributes OP incentives. It’s the same plan, rehashed for arbitrum.
Velodrome has done well because they saw a need and filled it. They were and are the only “bribe for emissions” model that matters to optimism. They’re not fighting with other protocols for bribe money and partnerships. Chronos is hardly in the same spot and If you’re going to compare to velo/op please try to do so in good faith and give users who aren’t using optimism the same level of knowledge you have.
When you say “arbitrum can’t afford” it, you’re saying you won’t ask for another grant to continue this TAG program, correct? That’s what this leads one to believe.
I’m still of the opinion that incentivizing locking CHR is only self serving and grant funds would be better spent elsewhere. Locking CHR now will have no effect on the massive chr emissions that are created after the incentives leave.
Back to the second part of that quote, it is an assumption that doesn’t take into account other proposals that will eventually pass in some form offering something to do with the ARB other than dump. While we acknowledge that all plans result in some level of arb being dumped, this is more snake oil salesman talk for “our plan is the only way people don’t dump” which is entirely untrue.
No problem! I understand your point and we’ve tried to address this with ChronoX. The platform will have an important part to play in keeping locking attractive. Revenue potential is very high. If we perform in line with Thena (who haven’t got incentives) we’re looking at around $2,000 a day that will be converted into veCHR and will go back into the hands of veCHR voters (a rebase of sorts if you will). Importantly this “rebase” does not come minting additional supply, actually takes CHR of the market and directly buys it to support LP revenue. This should keep locking very attractive. Over time and with emissions decaying at 2% each week the projection is a strong interplay between increasing CHR scarcity and veCHR rewards for voters.
Of course the timings and conditions are not the same, but arbitrum is about embark on the same path and importantly direct LP incentives have been shown to be the wrong way to approach growth and supporting long term players has a role to play in sustained growth: [RAMSES] [DRAFT] [STIP - Round 1] - #21 by alexander-velodrome
Its not just about locking, our proposal is about lowering the cost for liquidity for arbitrum projects and importantly we will focus on growing new native projects that can bring explosive network growth, whilst using the least amount of ARB possible.
I don’t think I’ve said we will follow the same path as velodrome. The point I wanted to drive home is that bribe for emissions are much more capital efficient and sustainable. This has also been seen with the curve ecosystem as I’ve noted. Given these benefits, we think that the Chronos TAG infrastructure would we a worthwhile growth instrument for Arbitrum. We cant predict where it will go, but at least the fundamentals for growth are there and takes into account previous errors from OP grants.
We hope to continue funding Chronos TAG in the future and inevitably Arbitrum will have to turn to the most cost effective growth solutions (like ours) and not direct LP rewards. Of course some ARB will be dumped, but at least we are not guaranteeing that 100% of it will be.
Although it is agreed that voting incentives are one of the most capital efficient ways to bootstrap and sustain new tokens, the STIP is aimed to increase ARB circulating supply AND push adoption. The ARB usage as written seems to be aimed to prop up veCHR more than it stands to increase Arbitrum adoption in any way or form.
ChronoX being a new product means that it should not be part of the current proposal, no proof points to even see if such an experiment has any basis.
As stated by Matt from Stable Labs we will wait for the main proposal to be amended in regards to since that is not allowed by the STIP.
