APY Tokenomics — Token Emissions, Distribution & Utility

Published in

APY.Finance

6 min readJan 13, 2022

What is the APY Token?

Since its inception, the APY token has been conceptualized as a governance token, offering great power to token holders within the community. APY.Finance is more committed than ever to the long-term success of this mission, while further increasing the usefulness, and incentive to hold, the APY token through incentivization of various token utility and lockup mechanics that greatly reward users for doing so.

The ultimate goal is to divert tokens, token incentives, and power through governance, away from short-term holders, and more heavily toward those aligned with this long-term vision.

Today, we will provide an update on how this is being achieved, including the current and future states of APY.Finance tokenomics, including APY token distribution, emissions, governance, and utility.

APY Token Distribution

Total Tokens: 100mm

Public Liquidity Mining Rewards: 31.2%
Community Initiatives: 12.3%
Team & Advisors (vested): 20.0%
Seed Round (vested): 20.0%
Strategic Investors (vested): 16.5%

APY Token Emissions

While the APY token distribution amount hasn’t changed since the original release of the token, we’d like to provide an update on the current state of APY token emissions schedule. As the seed round & strategic investor portion of tokens have all been distributed; we are now emitting less tokens monthly than ever before.

Seed Round & Strategic Investors

A portion of the APY token distribution (36.5%) has been allocated and distributed to seed and strategic investors, vested on a 1-year vesting schedule, starting on 11/9/20.

Between 11/9/20–11/9/21, a total of 2.8mm APY Tokens were being emitted toward investors monthly. As of 11/9/21, the investor token distributions have been completed, and we are no longer emitting tokens toward those incentives; greatly reducing the overall monthly token emissions.

Public Liquidity Mining Rewards

A portion of the APY token distribution (31.2%) is allocated toward public liquidity mining rewards; APY rewards for yield farming on the platform with stablecoins, which are currently emitted at a fixed rate of 210,000 APY/week. This was designed to aid in bootstrapping platform growth and rewarding early believers of the platform.

As new token utility mechanics such as boost-locking, described later, are implemented, a larger share of these liquidity mining rewards will be allocated to those most aligned with the long-term vision of APY.Finance, without any additional tokens being emitted.

Liquidity Provision Rewards

A portion of the Liquidity Mining program reward tokens is rewarded to users participating in Uniswap / Balancer pools.

Liquidity provision rewards for participating in the Uniswap or Balancer LP pools are emitted at a fixed rate of 70,000 APY/week, divided equally between the two pools.

Community Initiatives

A portion of the APY token distribution (12.3%) is allocated toward various community initiatives we can use to continue to bootstrap sustainable and long-term growth of the platform and various mechanics. These tokens aren’t emitted at a fixed rate and can be used as necessary.

Team & Advisors

A portion of the APY token distribution (20%) is allocated toward APY.Finance team members and advisors. These tokens are vested with a 1-year cliff followed by a 3-year linear vesting schedule.

These tokens aren’t emitted at a fixed monthly rate, depending on each team member’s individual vesting schedule, and will continue to fluctuate as the team scales.

APY Token Utility

Our mission with increasing token utility is simple: to provide rewards for users actively participating, and adding value to, various elements of platform operation.

Token utility offers new and exciting reasons for APY token holders to accumulate, hold and use their APY tokens past just that of providing liquidity in Balancer and Uniswap pools. Additionally, these new, innovative token utilities, will provide methods of capturing larger amounts of APY, all while emitting fewer tokens overall.

Governance

First and foremost, the APY token is a governance token. Phase 1 of governance has now been integrated, and APY token holders (and those currently using APY tokens to provide liquidity) are now able to vote on proposals created by the APY.Finance team. Proposals are often a direct result of feedback and discussions shared in the governance discussion forum from members within the community.

As APY.Finance continues along with its roadmap of decentralization, greater power will be unlocked for APY token holders participating in governance. In the future, APY governance token holders will be able to participate in protocol governance even more directly by creating proposals, and further decentralization will open the doors for the possibilities of larger and more innovative token and protocol mechanics.

Boost-Locking

Boost-locking is a feature currently being voted on through a governance proposal that will allow APY token holders to lock owned APY tokens for set durations in exchange for blAPY.

A user’s blAPY balance may grant access to incentives such as larger shares of APY rewards when yield farming on the platform. These rewards are emitted as part of the already existing liquidity mining program token distribution, and as a result, this will not affect APYemissions schedule or circulating supply

Additionally, a user’s blAPY balance may grant other benefits such as additional voting weight in the future, and more, in the future. This is one method of diverting more APY away from short-term holders and toward those more aligned with the long-term vision of APY. Finance, while rewarding those supporters in the process.

Learn more about boost-locking here.

Safety-Stability Treasury

Following the successful integration of boost-locking mechanics and Olympus Pro’s bonding market mechanics, APY.Finance will host a governance proposal for the implementation of a safety-stability treasury.

A safety-stability treasury will offer APY token holders an opportunity to participate in single-sided staking; staking their APY tokens into a safety-stability treasury that may have a portion (up to 30%) liquidated to cover a rare shortfall event of the platform, or any individual strategy. Stakers will receive rewards for participating in single-sided staking into the safety-stability treasury.

Platform Management

Further down the line, APY.Finance will propose platform management token utility functions. This means APY token holders will be able to stake tokens temporarily in order to grant access to various platform management functions, and earn rewards for doing so.

Larger, more complex, or riskier operations will require a greater token stake, and offer more rewards in turn, while more lightweight, day-to-day functions will require less tokens staked, and not as many. This decentralizes platform management away from the APY.Finance team and in the hands of the greater community. This increased decentralized control of the platform further enables more community-created, and more innovative, governance proposals.

Acquiring the APY Token

Uniswap / Balancer

Currently, in order to Acquire the APY token to participate in protocol governance, users can connect their wallet and trade for the token on Balancer or Uniswap.

MetaMask

Alternatively, users can import the token address via MetaMask wallet and trade for the token there as well.

APY token contract address: 0x95a4492F028aa1fd432Ea71146b433E7B4446611

What’s Next?

APY.Finance is currently exploring other solutions for ways to purchase the token with fewer gas fees. While we don’t have any specific solutions to share more information about at this time, keep an eye on our announcements and social channels in case of any news or announcements in the future.

Wrap-Up

We hope this was an insightful look into the long-term vision of APY tokenomics, and the plan for increasing the utility of the APY tokens. We appreciate your continued support and hope you’re as excited as we are for the implementation of various token utility initiatives where token holders will be able to put their APY holdings to great use!