ETHFI DAO Proposal: Seasonal Rewards and LRT²

Introduction

Following the success of ether.fi season 1, 2 and 3, ether.fi proposes extending the seasons initiative with the introduction of season 4, targeted at fostering community engagement and support in the restaking space, while continuing to support the success of integrations in the Ethereum ecosystem.

Objective

• Create a sustainable plan for future points seasons and rewards
• Support our partners through the continued expansion of integrations
• Foster an ecosystem of category leading liquid restaking tokens and AVSs.

Timeline

• Start Date: Sep 15, 2024
• End Date: NEVER
• Seasons run every 4 months, starting after the end of Season 3.
• Every season will have a unique set of rewards that will be revealed through the season.

Mechanics

StakeRank, StakingFrens and the Diamond Campaign were all mechanisms utilized throughout season 1-3 to grow the restaking mindshare and community. These campaigns have all achieved tremendous success, however as the protocol grows, so does the need to further simplify the mechanisms to allow for incentivization across all asset verticals that ether.fi now operates in. With this in mind for S4, the mechanisms are designed as follows.

• ether.fi Loyalty Points continue to accrue at a rate of 10k per ETH per day, subject to boosts and multipliers for DeFi partners.
• Season rewards will consist of a variety of reward tokens, including:
  • ETHFI token rewards
  • Partner token rewards
  • LRT² governance token rewards (see below)
• Up to 2,000,000 ETHFI per season may be directed towards season rewards. This may be modified or increased each season.
• Rewards allocation will be based on accumulated ether.fi loyalty points during the season.
• Season rewards are separate and in addition to normal staking and restaking rewards.

Introducing LRT²

LRT² is a new protocol for distribution of LRT rewards designed to streamline the reward process and reduce transaction costs. It is a collaboration between all major LRT protocols on Ethereum, with plans for expansion to include other L1s.

The purpose of LRT² is to wrap rewards distribution from a large number of AVSs and other restaking-related rewards into a single rewards token and create an industry standard. LRT² will be a vault which holds the restaking rewards tokens as underlying assets. Through LRT², LRT projects can pool AVS rewards into a single vault and issue vault share tokens to their stakers (or distributor contract). Holders of this token would have the ability to unwrap for the underlying assets, with a cool down period to be assessed. Further work will be performed and communicated on the methodology of the whitelisting process and exchange rate pricing mechanics of the LRT² token.

LRT² will consistent of two tokens:

• The LRT² rewards token, which wraps all restaking rewards.
• The LRT² governance token, which governs reward token whitelisting, restaking reward parameters, and treasury management. More analysis is to be performed around the mechanics of this Governance token to guard against any identified attack vectors. Furthermore, this token should not be released until LRT², and the restaking ecosystem, is more mature and factors affecting the underlying tokens, including whitelisting, liquidity and project viability are better known.

The benefits are:

• Industry standardization
• Supply sink for AVS rewards
• For small stakers, rewards aggregate. No need for multiple claims as all rewards will accrue into one unified token.
• For LRT protocols, this provides alignment on reward mechanisms and efficiency through standardization of reward distribution

Initial set of protocols participating in LRT² will be Puffer, Swell, Renzo, ether.fi, and Kelp

LRT² Homepage: https://www.lrt2.fi/

Additional information

• The proposed LRT² governance tokens will be allocated to protocols collaborating together in the development of a unified restaking rewards aggregation layer.
• Community members would be informed about how they can qualify for the airdrop and participate in Seasons 4+ activities through the protocol’s Discord, Twitter and other socials. To provide further clarity, restaking ETH will continue to be the primary factor affecting qualifying criteria, meaning users will not have to change typical behavior from seasons 1-3 to continue accruing rewards.
• Seasons 4+ airdrop distribution would follow the same vesting schedule of previous Seasons.
• The intended design is subject to change through the season as feedback and suggestions from the community emerge

Conclusion

Through the continued dialogue and feedback from our community, we’ve refined our program to distill the core functions into an easy to approach and understandable format. ether.fi loyalty points take center stage this season, comprising the singular metric to unlock future rewards. We foresee the upcoming shift in the restaking landscape towards sustainable yields at scale to mark an inflection point, wherein the partnerships we have fostered with AVS and Networks shall fuel the next wave of growth. ether.fi’s pillars of transparency, risk, and reputation play an increasingly important role as the breadth of our products and depth of our markets cross assets and ecosystems. We envision this season to be one of the most impactful to date!

Next steps

The voting window will be open for 4 days

• For: Approve Seasonal reward program and the participation in LRT²
• Against: Do not approve the proposal

Thank you for your continued support.