The Origins of Metrom
A Journey Through DeFi Incentives
The story of Metrom is one of innovation and relentless experimentation. What began 2–3 years ago as a mission to reimagine incentivization in DeFi has evolved into a cutting-edge platform that simplifies and optimizes reward structuring and distribution.
From our beginnings with Dxdao and Swapr, where we pioneered DIY permissionless campaigns, to the launch of Carrot and its game-changing KPI-based incentives, Metrom has consistently pushed boundaries to offer projects greater control, efficiency, and flexibility in their incentivization efforts.
The First Step: Swapr and DIY Campaigns
Our journey started with Swapr, an AMM we built as part of the DXdao ecosystem. One of Swapr’s standout features was the introduction of DIY permissionless campaigns.
These campaigns enabled protocols — especially on Arbitrum and GnosisChain — to incentivize liquidity by designing reward structures that targeted specific pairs on Swapr’s Uni-V2 pools. What made this powerful was its permissionless approach: any protocol could step in, launch a campaign, and distribute rewards within minutes.
The impact was immediate, with many projects adopting Swapr for their pools. But we didn’t stop there — we continued to push the boundaries and began experimenting even further.
Early Experiments
Even then, making incentivization more efficient was already a popular topic. So, we began experimenting with several different approaches:
- Multiple rewards: Campaigns could distribute multiple types of rewards at once. This was really popular and worked very well, especially as this was at the peak of the DAO-DAO partnerships era.
- Staking limits: We introduced caps to ensure a minimum guaranteed APR for liquidity providers.
- Liquidity locking: A feature was developed for farmers to lock liquidity in exchange for higher yields.
Our biggest takeaway was the importance of staying flexible and pushing forward. We realized we were only scratching the surface, with plenty more to explore.
The Birth of Carrot: Conditional Incentives
Doubling down on improving incentives, we came up with a novel idea: conditional rewards. This led to the launch of Carrot, which introduced a TVL KPI (Key Performance Indicator) as a condition for unlocking rewards.
Picture a scenario where rewards are only released when specific conditions are met. These conditions could be customized for different use cases, such as linear incentives, minimum payouts, or bonus-driven structures, to name a few.
For example, in a Minimum Payout scenario set at 80% of the reward pool, a Target KPI of $1 million TVL is established, with $10,000 allocated for rewards. If the protocol only reaches $700,000 in TVL, it triggers the minimum payout of $8,000 (80% of the reward pool). The remaining $2,000 (20%) is returned to the protocol, saving them that portion of the reward.
At the time, this was a novel concept, and Carrot allowed us to explore how TVL-based rewards could be adjusted to align incentives with performance. While it was an exciting idea, it also highlighted certain challenges along the way.
Challenges and Lessons Learned
One major challenge we faced was the difficulty of continuously computing these conditions onchain — it was both costly and inefficient. We tried solving this using reality.eth, where the community could answer questions like “What was the average TVL for this pool?” and bond their answers. But relying on the community introduced its own set of problems — timing and accuracy were difficult to guarantee.
We also explored using oracles like subgraphs to streamline reward calculations, but even this approach remained costly and clunky in practice.
This led us to a crucial realization: the more automated and seamless this process could be, the better. Achieving that required moving away from strictly on-chain solutions.
The Evolution: Toward Off-Chain Computation
By this time, the DeFi space was evolving, with a growing focus on improving user experience (UX). The use of offchain computations to reduce costs while still maintaining trust and transparency was becoming widely accepted and increasingly common.
This shift aligned perfectly with our goals. We began exploring the idea of building a system where rewards could be calculated off-chain but verified through mechanisms like zk-proofs or similar solutions. And that’s when the concept for Metrom was born.
The Birth of Metrom: Simplifying and Optimizing Incentives
Metrom was born from our experiences, designed as a flexible and user-friendly platform for creating custom incentivization campaigns. It allows users to experiment with KPI-based rewards, focusing on reducing reward leakage, gaining better control over spending, and recovering undistributed rewards.
One key observation over the years is that many projects either over-incentivize or under-incentivize, which results in inefficiencies, missed opportunities, and a lack of engagement from the community. Metrom aims to solve these issues by offering more precision and control in how rewards are managed.
A New Vision: KPI-Based Incentivization
With the introduction of KPI-based rewards, we’re transforming the way DeFi incentives are structured. By setting clear, measurable KPIs for campaigns, projects can extract real value from their incentives.
Communities are motivated to participate and contribute to the project’s success, knowing that as specific KPIs are met, more rewards are unlocked. Whether it’s achieving a certain TVL, increasing trading volume, or boosting community engagement, Metrom enables projects to control reward distribution in a way that is sustainable, effective, and directly aligned with their goals.
Looking Forward
As we continue building and refining Metrom, our mission remains the same: to help DeFi projects create efficient and impactful incentivization campaigns that deliver real value.
From our early days of DIY campaigns in Swapr to the more advanced KPI-based models we’re developing now, this journey has been one of learning, experimentation, and growth.
We feel this is just the beginning and we’re excited to see what’s on the horizon.
About Metrom: Metrom is a user-friendly, efficient liquidity mining platform designed for the benefit of both campaign creators and liquidity providers, specifically targeting Concentrated Liquidity AMMs (CLAMMs).
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