Read the original proposal on Discourse

This proposal previously appeared on Snapshot, prematurely. The DAO guidelines are available in the Information and Templates section of the Discourse page. In particular, the policies set forth by BIP3, BIP12, and the BIP12 Addendum require all proposals to be published to Discourse prior to their submission on Snapshot, with a clearly stated timeframe for voting to begin. While there is no nefarious intent, it is important to maintain the DAO process.

TL;DR

• Extend previously approved LM rewards on the REN pool for a further 12 weeks.
• REN has attracted a liquidity pool of over $25m at the time of writing, while being amongst the top 12-13 in transaction volume on Bancor.

Voting Instructions

• Vote FOR to extend LM rewards on REN for 12 weeks
• Vote AGAINST for no change to current REN pool
• Stake BNT in a protected pool on http://bancor.network
• Stake vBNT in the governance contract on Ethereum 1
• Use vBNT to vote

Discussion

• REN has attracted over $25,000,000 of liquidity in the REN/BNT pool.
• The REN pool currently has more transaction volume than 6 of the other tokens currently earning LM rewards, indicating it is a major asset for BNT stakers.
• Ren offers a suite of tokens that can be bridged in a decentralized manner such as renDOGE, renZEC, etc. And soon there will also be renSOL and renFTM. It is my contention that unifying the Ren and Bancor ecosystem presents truly interesting prospects as both projects continued their growth and innovation.

REN pool, as one of the OG pools on bancor, has been deprived of its LM rewards for too long!

REN is a go-to protocol for cross-blockchain liquidity and using assets from different chains in DeFi applications, earning yield. In less than 12 months RenVM had almost 4 billion dollars in volume, and its total value locked is 720 million dollars.

As interoperability becomes the key that connects all the different DeFi chains (Ethereum, Polkadot, Solana, BSC, Avalanche...), the demand for using RenVM and the REN token is gonna increase significantly.

REN has been among the first pools on Bancor that provided LM rewards and as of now still has just sub 30 millions dollars in liquidity and 2 million dollars in daily volume. It is true that liquidity did not drop as significantly as expected with the end of the reward period, but rest assured that without the LM incentive the liquidity will slowly dribble away to platforms that will provide more incentive. We can still see REN pool doing even better than The Graph and Matic pool, which have great rewards and are recent.

It would be a shame to lose many REN providers on Bancor. Let's change that.

I propose to continue the current LM rewards for another 12 weeks to keep liquidity on Bancor and attempt to encourage more deposits.

There is an auditable provenance for the community's interest in extending the LM program on REN, prior to the reorganization of the Discourse page:

https://gov.bancor.network/t/ren-lm-extension/1444

How is helps the Bancor Protocol

It is imperative to know that the only value on REN token is to bond it into a darknode and receive a share of fees that are generated with use of RenVM. 100k REN is what needs to be bonded for a darknode and quiet frankly for a lot of people that is too much money and they could never run 1 by themselves. Bancor with its one-sided pools, full IL protection after 100 days and great rewards surpasses darknodes rewards and also enables you to be a bit more liberal with your holdings as there is no lockup in bancor protocol.

It would help Bancor, because as we are active in the REN community, so many people are looking for yield on their REN and they can not get anything without a darknode. Many people would add much more liquidity to bancor, and economics incentives are the best to spread the word of bancors amazing AMM experience. With more liquidity and demand for REN the more volume would come in as well, to further boost liquidity providers profitability.

• Decent swap fees on the REN/BNT pool. We can check historic data using Dune Analytics. I think we can argue that our average swap fees are higher than those for SNX, AAVE, OCEAN, YFI and even LINK.

• The imminent creation of the Darknode Community Fund, which may see the REN community bringing further liquidity to Bancor for renFIL, renBCH. REN Community will soon have the power to support protocols that are incentivising the use of renAssets (to the tune of 5% of darknode income per epoch). That might take the form of, for example, seeking to have renAssets whitelisted on Bancor and providing liquidity for the relevant renAsset pools. The REN community would also be promoting the use of Bancor for swaps / trades on REN and renAssets.