Summary:

Proposal to immediately end the LP token locking mechanism veNFTE in its current form to create a different form of value accrual and revenue sharing for protocol stakeholders that is in more alignment with their desired solution. Though the team believes strongly in the merits of using an LP locked position and veTokenomic model for revenue sharing and governance, the community and market has simply proven this is not of much interest to users. Whereas, on the other hand, staking solutions like that of ApeCoin and SushiSwap and QuickSwap Exchange, have all been successful alternative staking programs.

Background:

NFTEarth has led the way as a small and bootstrapped NFT protocol for over a year now in the non-fungible space, pioneering several new concepts such as utilizing a native token on the marketplace, introducing a LayerZero OFT token, and introducing permissionless LP incentives by collaborating with forward thinking projects such as SushiSwap and Angle Protocol to use the Merkl rewards program on Arbitrum, Polygon, Base, Ethereum, and Optimism.

The veNFTE system was abruptly ported from Arbitrum when the Arbitrum chain had a total halt in block producing back in December 2023 as a precautionary measure, and since then..the team has already shipped a similar, but simplified version of LP token locking and was introduced on Base L2 nearly 3 weeks ago. Despite having the new solution live, it has not garnered the interest or amount of LP locking to benefit users nor the protocol in any significant way, and this period of time (~3 weeks) is sufficient the team feels to have enough data to know it is time to pivot.

The team has several projects in the pipeline being developed, including expanding to non-EVM chains and additional new and unique collaborations with non-fungible use-cases.

Implementation

Upon conclusion of this vote, the Multisig and Deployer will call unlock on the veNFTE contract on Base which is contract address 0xc526C83849Fb4424e4563A3b609a4eBf916cf6d0 - as was the same function called on the Arbitrum xNFTE program, and anyone who has locked a position will be available to immediately withdraw, without penalty of any kind and receive their LP tokens back to use in liquidity mining that is currently live, or the new staking mechanisms that will be released to replace this. The process for any veNFTE holder to withdraw is to use BaseScan and head to https://basescan.org/token/0xc526C83849Fb4424e4563A3b609a4eBf916cf6d0 - connect with your wallet and then write function 13, which is withdraw. Upon completion of this, your veNTE will now be LP tokens on SushiSwap again.

See screencap:

Implications:

Creating a staking mechanism for users that encourages long-term growth and the alignment of both the protocol and users has always been the goal in building the staking solution. Though the veNFTE model took significant time to get into production, the results have simply been no where near where they need to be to drive growth in a rapid manner. Introducing a new mechanism for stakeholders to utilize will be another opportunity for the project to find PMF on the stakeholder side of the NFTEarth project equation. See attached screencap of the mockup of one of the two new staking mechanisms under review for implementation.