GEAR Token FAQ at the end of 2022
UPDATE as of 6th Jan, 2023: The CRV gauge is now live with $CRV & $GEAR rewards for LPs. The high 3 digit APY at the moment is due to a significant number of LPs not staking yet. But even if everyone stakes, the APY should be still > 70%. UPDATE: The CRV gauge is now live with $CRV & $GEAR rewards for LPs. The high 3 digit APY at the moment is due to a significant number of LPs not staking yet. But even if everyone stakes, the APY should be still > 70%. LP & stake here. Alternatively, you can also stake on Convex after adding liquidity to GEAR/ETH pool on Curve.
As far as reward claims go, the Cider rewards from the fee generated will be available for claim through the Gearbox dApp every few weeks. While the GEAR LP related future rewards will be available through the curve pool and interface.
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As far as reward claims go, the Cider rewards from the fee generated will be available for claim through the Gearbox dApp every few weeks. While the GEAR LP related future rewards will be available through the curve pool and interface.
After months of work by DAO members to come up with a token mechanism that is ideal for the the token launch, we finally had a mysterious contributor come in with 0xCider. 0xCider enabled us to launch the token in a shitbearmarket while minimizing the sell pressure & creating a more sustainable & engaging launch. And it worked well, achieving all its goals. The rest is history, time will tell…
You can read about how & what happened in this article:
See some more stats here:
And today, the final stage of 0xCider, FairTrading, ended. With its end, $GEAR token became fully transferable. With the token now live, multiple questions came in about what to do with the token and more. Let us go ahead and cover the most asked questions. The article is divided into 5 key parts & a smol FAQ at the end:
— Part 1: General GEAR token information
— Part 2: What can token holders do with $GEAR
— Part 3: Future possible utility ideas
— Part 4: Circulation and distribution info
— Smol FAQ
Part 1: General token information
The purpose of this part is to help you ensure you are interacting with the correct contract designated to Gearbox DAO. Given that there are multiple tokens with $GEAR symbol, the below details will help you find the one with the official token of Gearbox DAO.
Token Contract: 0xBa3335588D9403515223F109EdC4eB7269a9Ab5D. Specifically for Ethereum mainnet, not anywhere else currently.
Ticker: $GEAR
Decimals: 18
You find already find various Curve and Uniswap pools, and the DAO is planning to deploy some liquidity on Balancer in the coming weeks. So there should be quite some DEX arbitrage possible to do! Meanwhile, at the start a few CEX also support the launch: OKX, Huobi, Gate, MEXC, etc.
We do not particularly encourage anyone to use CEXes, nor do we have anything to do with these listings or trading. DAO didn’t pay anyone. Exchanges can do it on their own — we don’t mind, it’s not against the coleslaw. If you have any problems with a deposit or your CEX account, it is solely your relationship with the exchange. We can’t help you with this, be careful! Stay vigilant.
Part 2: What can token holders do with $GEAR?
Now with the token becoming transferable, we enter a phase wherenew holders who have recently acquired the token and existing token holders finally having the ability to move the token. For both the type of holders, there is significant interest in what they can do with it. Logical duh!
This section lists out alpha on what all is possible for now.
1. LP into the Curve GEAR/ETH pool
The Curve GEAR/ETH pool is the one that was deployed during the 0xCider phase to enable the FairTrading period. As of today, it became open to everyone and directly through the Curve UI too. You can add GEAR/ETH liquidity to the specific pool below & earn LP LM rewards.
Currently, to get rewards — you don’t need to stake into a gauge yet as it’s still in Curve governance process. Just hold your LP (whether claimed or not claimed from cider contract, doesn’t matter) — the rewards will accrue to you and be claimable in a few days in app.gearbox.fi/gear/rewards.
Closer to the time when a gauge will go live, reward distribution will become automatic via the gauge — so you’d need to stake your LP in Curve/Convex then. Keep an eye out, that will likely happen around Christmas or New Year.
Now, why should you LP to the Curve Pool?
The Curve pool generates yield in 4 different ways that together summed can generate a substantial APY, currently at over 50%+.
- Trading Fee through the pool: This is the trading fee that is generated through the Curve Pool as swpas happen. At the moment this is generating a ±6% APY, logical for new pools. Usually the organic trading fee subdues as time goes by across any AMM really.
- DAO Approved LM: As per GIP-36, 0.133% of the supply is to be used for LP LM of the Curve pool. This is about ~28.9% APY at current Levels.
- 0xCider Fee based LM: As per GIP-37, 50% of the generated during the FairTrading period was to be used for post 0xCider LP LM into the pool for a period of 4+ months. Since 30.8M GEAR were generated in fee, this means 15.4M or 0.154%. This is about ~33.48% APY at current levels.
- CRV Gauge Rewards(Updated): A proposal to create a gauge for GEAR/ETH pool was passed by Curve, you can check it here. Due to the same, you can now earn additional APY by LPing & staking here or by clicking on the image below. Alternatively, you can also stake on Convex after adding liquidity to GEAR/ETH pool on Curve.
Please note: The APYs above are subject to fluctuations basis the overall size of the pool, please verify APYs as and when you LP.
2. Setting up pools yourself
With $GEAR being a new token, there are still multiple DEXes (Uniswap, Balancer) where there are no liquidity pools set yet. While the initial trading volume has already higher than 9m$, this presents an opportunity to earn fee by deploying additional pools. Take your chance!
3. Govern
GEAR has always had value as a governance token, over the last 1 year we have had 1 proposal every ~11 days. With a total of 33 proposals going through. The proposals entail meaningful votes regarding treasury utilisation, allowedlist enhancement, tech upgrades and more.
You can use your GEAR to vote on the same or better, lead these. With 2M+ GEAR you can raise proposals to vote on, if you have something worthwhile in mind, put it up for discussion and after following the procedure put it for a vote. There are rewards for members who contribute towards pushing the protocol forward. Read about current governance setup:
4. Delegate
Are you more of a passive supporter? Rooting but from the sidelines? Feel free to delegate your GEAR to the representatives in order to make sure that your voice is heard and that the governance for Gearbox DAO remains smooth like it always has. You can do so here.
Read below to know more…
Part 3: Future possible utility
Is governance or LPing not your cup of tea? — No worries, the best part about Gearbox DAO is that we give the community to bring about the change they want to see. The same has been true for token utility as well.
Over the last few months, there have been discussions regarding possible utility for the token. Some instances of how it can be done were laid out by Overkoalafied in his token paper earlier. So far, there haven’t been any tokenomics forced into GEAR (like revenue sharing, veTokenomics, or other models) — because the PMF wasn’t clear. As it now becomes a bit more evident, we can decide on concrete models and implement them. It’s not a tomorrow decision as it requires much more data, but it definitely will be super important in the near future.
What is important is that from the start Gearbox has been having fees. They were never large though and not intended to be large for now:
- It doesn’t seem to make sense to rake fees while the protocol is still early on, and its entire TAM / reach is not fully clear. On the path to growth, startups don’t try to “milk users” from the get-go, it’s not a viable expansion strategy. With that being said, revenue must be done and will be done, but after solid growth has been there. Doing it too early is not a good idea. First grow, and grow big — then revenue.
- The fees can actually come from various aspects once growth is there, which can be: Credit Account performance fees, Credit Account opening-closing fees, DAO2DAO revenue sharing like Yearn does, and so on. It’s all on the table! So Gearbox is not restricted to current protocol fee sources, it can be quite dynamic.
- The way revenue or yield is shared, can be different too. It can be veTokenomics, it can be a GMX model, it can be an early LOOKS model, it could be MKR burning… all of these are viable paths, and it’s up to the DAO to figure out this direction.
Again, these opinions are of course subjective, but seem to be shared by many DAO members. These points can always be re-discussed and changed with the voting. Revenue, token accrual, real value sources, protocol fees — should and must be there. The concrete direction is TBD, but everyone is aligned so far to have this live.
Some discussions have also suggested enabling the staking of GEAR as cross-collateral on the protocol. This would require deep liquidity and an oracle for GEAR (token transferability gets us a step closer). DAO members may wish to flesh this idea out further. An interesting idea too! Any community members that wish to discuss ideas for future GEAR utility are encouraged to post to the forums or join the discussions in the #economics channel of the Discord server.
GEAR Token Initial Circulation
Initially circulating tokens are owned mostly by the community members: first testers, first Discord members, first users, retroactive drop, the recent liquidity mining, and some VIBES contest winners. In total:
- 5% Credit Account Mining, see the old contract.
- 1.433% for early testers and Discord members, see the old distributor.
- 0.5% for retroactive V1 liquidity mining, see the contract [the same is being used for new LM as well as the old drop: it’s a unified contract that is updated by the DAO every few weeks with fresh rewards].
- ~0.336% from the new V2 liquidity mining: that is 12 percent of the ~2.8% LM rewards allocated for the first year [approx 43 days of rewards are seeded into the same merkle as the above]. By the end of December, it might be a bit more, but this inflation is quite small.
- ~0.015% from VIBES subDAO that was sent to contest winners, small grants, and other things. See their reports in Notion.
- + some initial LM for the GEAR/ETH LPs, some small multisig compensations, etc. Likely all in the range within 0.1% more. And then + 0.2% or so when the DAO supplies some more LP by itself in January. This part won’t actually be circulating though, but sitting in the LP.
Roughly ~8% of the total supply will be circulating at the start. But since DAO owned >51% from the start, that 8% is actually ~16% of the allocated supply. That’s not tiny!
By the end of December, that total can become ~8% of the supply including some new LM rewards and contributor vestings. Some dashboards count vestings differently (even if it is all on-chain) so just keep this in mind. All the vestings are on-chain from the very first day, you can verify it all.
Coingecko now has the right up-to-date information:
Transparency Notice: vestings and numbers
Let these numbers not deceive you though. Early contributors start their vestings around the same time. But there is no cliff unlocks in chunks, it’s all linear vestings for 12 or 18 months or more. So, circulating supply can be increasing, but nobody can speak for what these members do with their tokens: buy, hold, sell, LP… it’s up to them.
- Who the early contributors are & what they did to help Gearbox DAO — can be found at the bottom of the main Notion page (links to the governance proposals or the article V1 product are there too).
- All the numbers & their vestings can be verified on-chain — instructions are in the docs. You can check the list of addresses of all early members (includes first round, DAO round, and developers). Some even have ENS attached to them, so you can see what they do & when.
A notice to CMC or on-chain tracking dashboards
If you are trying to make sense on-chain, then the following addresses & contracts ARE NOT circulating (so take 100% minus these portions):
- https://etherscan.io/address/0x7b065fcb0760df0cea8cfd144e08554f3cea73d1, 46.6% owned by the DAO [minus the grants and whatever activities that have taken place throughout 2021, see monthly DAO reports]. Up to DAO what to spend it on, but usually DAOs never deplete their treasuries fully, and it happens very very slowly: a multi-year process.
- https://etherscan.io/address/0xf7512B2B20Cf427ADD8b01D8CDEef97a4B0E2C27#readContract, ~40%. Whatever tokens are inside the contracts related to this vesting manager contract, are not circulating: they are either vested or not claimed. At the time of writing and for the foreseeable months, most of them are vesting and can’t be claimed. Whenever a token leaves one of the contracts attributed to this registry, you can count it cirulating. Their voting power also becomes x1 then.
- Some small distributions for grants, DAO Round part 1 & Part 2, comprise whatever is 40+46,6% minus community stages explained above. DAO rounds were ~3.8% in total, so the ~8% as per above is correct! You can & should check. You can go extra-picky and also exclude VIBES metaDAO multisig from circulation too, is all verifiable.
Smol FAQ
Q1. Where can I see & get my rewards for LP LM, Cider, and more?
Cider rewards will be available in a few days in here: https://app.gearbox.fi/gear/rewards. As for new LM rewards, those accrue to you simply by holding your LP in your wallet. Keep in mind that in a few days it might migrate to Curve gauge, which would require staking. With that, claiming of LM LP rewards will also happen via Curve/Convex then.
Claiming LP is in the cider interface or via contract directly.
Q2. Where can I see circulation information of GEAR?
Q3. Where can I see all funding rounds, contributors, team, investors? — see at the bottom of the main DAO Notion page, with all the links and terms.
Q4. Is there a history of the product, I want to study it in more detail?
Q5. Where can I find DAO monthly reports and get more information?
Q6. I want to know how the protocol works deeper, where do I start?
Check out the docs first: https://docs.gearbox.finance/. Also:
Q7. Where can I get my NFT badge for participating in 0xCider?
If you would like to join — just get involved on Discord. Discuss, research, lead and share. Call contributors out on their bullshit and collaborate on making things better. Here is how you can follow developments:
- Website: https://gearbox.fi/
- dApp: https://app.gearbox.fi/
- User Docs: https://docs.gearbox.finance/
- Developer Docs: https://dev.gearbox.fi/
- Forum: https://gov.gearbox.fi/t/start-here-forum-rules/
- Blog: https://medium.com/@gearboxprotocol
- Github: https://github.com/Gearbox-protocol
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/GearboxProtocol
- Snapshot page: https://snapshot.org/#/gearbox.eth
- And, of course, the DAO working docs:
