[MFIP-2] Meridian Ventures purposes to initiate incentives for veAERO voters to support the MST-ETH liquidity pool on Aerodrome by buying back MST tokens from the market.

Summary Please note that this Snapshot has a shorter voting window of 48 hours to give Meridian sufficient time to implement it for the upcoming epoch.

Rationale Meridian's journey began on the Base network, where MST tokens were natively minted as part of its fair launch strategy. Since then, the MST-ETH liquidity on Base has remained the primary hub for trading MST tokens.

Currently, MST liquidity is hosted on the Aerodrome exchange. Meridian Ventures has decided to leverage the growth of both Base and Aerodrome by allocating a portion of treasury assets to incentivize voters on Aerodrome to support the MST liquidity pool, creating a sustainable liquidity flywheel.

Bribe efficiency Bribe efficiency on Aerodrome refers to how effective a bribe is in attracting votes for a particular liquidity pool, relative to the amount spent on the bribe. For example, a bribe efficiency of 1.5 means paying 1$ in bribes results in 1.5$ worth of emissions. Meridian will implement a strategy to bribe and accumulate voting power as outlined below.

Strategy Meridian will allocate a portion of its treasury assets to drive sustainable liquidity growth for the MST liquidity pool, as long as it remains profitable and efficient. The strategy involves using earned emissions and fees to continuously bribe voters, while also allocating part of these assets to accumulate protocol-owned voting power.

Key points: Meridian Ventures will not issue new MST tokens from its treasury, staying true to our long-term commitment to preserving MST value. Initially, we will bribe voters with USDC from our treasury. Earned AERO emissions will be used to buy back $MST from the market and incentivize voters with it. Meridian Ventures will shift liquidity from other networks to make this strategy more efficient and reduce losses to arbitrageurs. Another approach could involve directing $AERO emissions to the Meridian treasury, potentially locking them and using the votes to support the MST pool.

Voting ‘Yes’ - Meridian Ventures will use AERO emissions to buy back MST from the market to incentivize voters whenever bribe efficiency is above 1, while retaining AERO in the treasury when advantageous.

Voting No - No MST buybacks will be used to bribe external voters.