Conca-ve(USP)

Preface: "Money comes and goes, friendship stays forever. Capital comes and goes, but trust stays forever" - MiaoShi. What is the most precious thing in DeFi right now? It is definitely not capital, maybe not talents; it is TRUST. Thus trust shall be rewarded properly.

Goal of this blog piece: Our community, partners, and work team have been working hard on building cool things while the world is rather volatile if not noisy outside of our cozy "caves". I think it is the time to put everything together and reveal who we (Concave, the Spoon) really are as we are about to begin this fun adventure together.

Disclaimer: None of this is from me, I am again just a homie who put all the wisdoms from the community and Policy work team (e.g. GrapeApe, Coud, Mert, Franklin, probably missed a lot other people too) together.

PCC: I think it should be pretty clear by now that Concave is NOT a rebase protocol, at least not your father's rebase token. Instead, Conca-ve(USP) is VeBase which is actually very based.

Elaboration: VeBase is a DeFi model which extracts and internalizes the benefits from both the post-modern Ve model and the legacy rebase model.

Part-I: Why Ve? A number of key elements in the Ve model are highly suitable for a USP-centric, Proof-of-Gem airdrop-generating protocol like Concave (for more context, check previous policy proposal: https://concave.lol/blog/community-proposal-2-concave-apy-supply-growth-framework-treasury-excess-earning-distribution-framework-joint-proposal/).

1. The Ve model allows stakeholders to lock in not only their capital but also their trust in order to receive the lucrative airdrops generated by Concave's money-making USPs. The locking is done via a lock-staking mechanism where users can lock their Concave token into veConcave for a fixed period of time, ranging from x days to y months (x,y to be determined and approved by Policy team and community). This is different from the legacy staking model where user can stake and unstake anytime they want, that is merely the locking of capital (small potato) but not trust (big potato)
2. The Ve model allows trust to be rewarded fairly. Trust is measured by both the capital you put in and the time you choose to lock it (detailed trust function will be determined and approved by Policy team and community). Larger the capital + longer the lock, more the trust, higher the rewards. In another word, your % claim on the protocol rewards, i.e. airdrop from USPs (strictly non inflationary) + bonding (emission-based but EPS boosting) + special airdrop (secret for now), will be positively related to both the amount of Concave tokens locked and the time of the lock (i.e. level of trust, but again the detailed calculation will be determined and approved by Policy team and community).
3. The Ve model gives stakeholders and the community the power and freedom to develop/refine/select from a broad collection of diversified USPs to suit their own needs in different market conditions, further utilizing the decentralized wisdom of our chad community.
4. As you expected, locked trust are tokenized which are tradable. Concave will have not only the platform/products but also scientific pricing models for users to exchange their trusts efficiently.

Putting everything in a simple diagram.

Part-II: Why "base" but no "re"? The legacy model is great in many aspects but it also have quite a number of significant drawbacks, some of which are already established in MiaoShi's theoretical pricing model: https://twitter.com/CiaoShi_Concave/status/1477930637176758274.

As established in the bonding deep-dive (https://concave.lol/blog/the-essence-of-bonding-for-rebase-tokens/) + above pricing model and as observed in recent market movements/events, the "re" part is actually the source of cancer in the classic rebase model. More specifically, having to anchor towards a pre-defined growth schedule, reward rate, thus artificially high APY can be highly inflationary and massively dilutive especially under tough market conditions. Earning a nice reward in a healthy way is great but when reward rate becomes an obligation, it becomes a poison pill to stakeholder's value. In light of that, I propose that the growth schedule set up in Community Proposal - 2 (https://concave.lol/blog/community-proposal-2-concave-apy-supply-growth-framework-treasury-excess-earning-distribution-framework-joint-proposal/) will merely be a rough guidance through time, Policy team has the discretion to meaningfully deviate from the growth or the APY curve when market conditions warrant. Again, remember this is a small potato anyway.

At the same time, we want to keep the bonding part of the rebase model, or as I call it the "base" part. As established in the bond deep-dive piece, bonding is an efficient way to grow treasury, bootstrap valuation, and bootstrap community trust. When used smartly by Policy team, bonding is not only non-dilutive but also EPS-accretive for stakers. The Concave Dev team (Dionyus, Convex, Casuwu + many others) and Policy team (Sert, Veenee) have built out the tools and frameworks to ensure that our automated smart bonding machine will always grow our treasury efficiently and in a EPS-accretive way for veConcave holders, as shown below.

FAQs:

1. How will the supply emission work in the veBase model? For now, bonding will be the primary source of supply emission. When bonding happens, the veConcave will see their holdings increase at least proportional to the bonding emission. For example, if total supply is 100,000 Concave token, and 50,000 is locked as veConcave so (50%). If 10,000 bond (10% of total supply) is sold, then we will see at least a 10% increase in veConcave holdings (i.e. 5,000). Note that this is actually slightly different from Andre Cronje's modern Ve model due to the bonding nature of our supply growth. As you can see, the supply emission remain very similar to the rebase mechanism in the legacy rebase model but also consistent with the anti-dilution concept in the Ve model. The detailed frameworks on the quantity of holding increase for veConcave and distribution of holding increase among the veConcave holders of different lock periods will be determined/approved by Policy team and community.
2. Are pToken holders worse off vs. veConcave holders. Absolutely not! (a) From the dilution perspective, as you can see from above, veConcave holders will still be diluted whenever there is bonding given the nature of bonding, however, pToken holders are still immune to bonding dilution. (b) From the trust perspective, we promise the unredeemed pTokens will carry the highest level of trust thus highest level of boosting on airdrop claims in our distribution frameworks (which again shall be determined/approved by Policy team and community), it is because pToken represents early investment or distinguished contribution to the project which is a pure form of trust. Frankly, I believe the pToken holder is definitely better off in this veBase model.

Closing remarks: Trust lasts so it shouldn't come easy.  You shouldn't give us your trust based on hype, fomo, or even this high level veBase model write-up. Instead, you should base your trust on us off the quality of our USPs. Before giving us your trust, come to our community, evaluate the quality of our researches, probe the logics of our frameworks and analysis, stare at our smart contracts, and ask us questions whenever things do not make sense to you. Concave want to earn your trust the right way. There are quite a number of electrifying USPs being thoroughly explored and in the pipeline, but for now we are focusing on the rather "boring" stuffs, i.e. building a solid treasury foundation for our future. If we cannot build the best automated bonding machine in the DeFi space, why would you trust us to build your Concave(rse).

Concave = Vebase = Trust. Own the trust, not the capital. Sisi Vamos.