Voting Dynamics

There are 17,027,974.44 CVX locked as vlCVX. Each vlCVX controls roughly 7.37 veCRV.

• Ownership votes (adding a gauge) on Convex are yes/no
• If the majority signals yes, Convex as a whole (with all 131million veCRV) votes to approve on Curve DAO
• We need at the very least majority (51%) of the Convex quorum (20% for ownership votes) to make that happen
• The Convex vote alone would get us >30% (Curve DAO quorum) of all veCRV votes (131 million > 96 million), but not enough for a guaranteed approval (51% of all veCRV, 131 million < 163 million)

The quorum in Convex governance is only 20% for "Curve ownership governance votes" (which adding a gauge is)

For a majority of the 20% quorum of all vlCVX = 17'238'828 × 0.2 × 0.50 + 1 = 1,723,882.8 + 1 vlCVX.

There are 320,152,233.608 veCRV in circulation as of today. In order for a new proposal to pass, a 30% quorum is required with 51% approval.

Bribing Dynamics

There are three kinds of votes that can be bribed:

• Ongoing gauge votes: these can be carried out by bribe.crv.finance or votium.app - recur every week, but each voter can only change every two weeks (including the Convex multisig, so Votium bribes only take place every other week).

Votium is more user friendly and probably more efficient, but CVX holders also benefit from bribe.crv.finance as a body (i.e. Alice is a vlCVX holder, she gets a pro-rata share of the bribe whether or not she votes for anything at all if the Convex wallet as a body vote for the proposal).

This can be used as a mechanism to assure CRV inflation is directed towards the desired pool. A single wallet can split its vote towards multiple pools.

• Activation of gauge vote: This must be carried out once during the life of a pool. Curve v1 pools are permission-less, but they do not benefit from any CRV inflation stream unless this vote is favorable. Can be later revoked. This is an up/down vote, so Convex holders would need to have a majority support for the multisig to vote yes in the name of the protocol. These can be bribed by either Votium or bribe.crv.finance. Mochi did so, including a specific negotiation with the Votium team to get a bonus airdrop later of governance tokens.
• Other governance votes: Carried out on an as-needed basis. These include whitelisting smart contracts (smart contracts cannot have power over veCRV unless specifically whitelisted. So far, only StakeDAO, Convex, Yearn, and Harvest Finance have had this privilege). One protocol, notably https://dao.curve.fi/vote/ownership/81 https://gov.curve.fi/t/proposal-to-whitelist-earning-farm-contract/2127/12 was rejected for whitelisting as the community deemed their proposal of doubtful merit. It is likely that future whitelisting protocols would face opposition from the Convex community unless some kind of useful value proposition was put into place. There is a current discussion on the Curve Governance Forum as to whether to suppress the whitelisting requirement, however, its odds of passage appear doubtful.

Every holder of veCRV and vlCVX is incentivized to vote for us in return for ROOK from the treasury, which they can collect in addition to their regular gauge weight bribes. Note that gauge weight bribes are competitive, and because beneficial owners or their delegates can split votes, in practice the votes follow approximately the dollar value distribution of the bribes for a large portion of the community. Some DAOs (notably Badger) have taken on stakes of their own to vote for their preferred bitcoin-related pools to support their own wrapper on top of Convex pools. Others appear to have made side deals (e.g. Tetranode has made side deals with Abracadabra to support MIM-related pools).

Generally, gauge votes are supported as they are seen as bringing the potential for further protocol revenue. Voting yes for a gauge pool doesn’t appear to be controversial. Bribes would likely be more of a marketing effort (e.g. Mochi) than they would be necessary for the vote to pass.

Votium

Votium is a new entrant in the ecosystem. Originally intended as a committed sale of votes by an auction mechanism, they have repositioned towards a more marketplace approach. Any vlCVX holder who votes partially or wholly for the bribing pool can claim a pro-rata of the bribe via the interface. Many vlCVX holders delegate to Votium to carry out votes on their behalf, which are generally pro-rata to bribe amounts (with some consideration of other voters so as to not overcrowd the same bribes, and a 5% slot reserved for ecosystem friendly pools like 3CRV and Tricrypto2). Note that delegation is not binding and a wallet can instead vote on its own, overriding the delegation for that specific round.

Votium bribes are public: there is a substantial amount of distaste associated with the terminology that may discourage some participants. This may encourage private deals instead, which could benefit KD if it were known that the protocol is a substantial holder willing to sell votes discreetly.