PGP-41 | Marketing & Growth Strategy - Phase II

Summary:
This proposal aims to launch Phase II of the marketing & growth strategy of Parallel, following the completion of Phase I.

Rationale:
Phase I of the marketing & growth strategy was approved by the DAO and covered three initiatives:

• Advertisements (via Spindl)
• Liquidity Growth incentives
• Merchandising

Phase I was originally scoped for 6 months. In practice, the Liquidity Growth program ran over 9 months, as Cooper Labs deliberately reduced the deployment rate at the start in order to optimize distribution across pools and partners. This decision proved effective in extending the reach of the program and securing better co-incentivization conditions.

For the Advertisements budget, approximately $42,000 remains unspent from the original Phase I allocation ($54,000). This is the result of a deliberately conservative spend rate, driven by current retail market conditions, running ads at full capacity in a low-sentiment market produces poor conversion and wastes capital. This remaining budget will continue to be deployed at a controlled rate into Phase II.

Phase II introduces a new initiative: a cashback program targeting AI agent-initiated payments in USDp, in preparation for the V3.2 release and its x402 / Machine Payment Protocol (MPP) integrations. As agentic payments emerge as a critical DeFi use case, positioning USDp as the go-to stablecoin for programmable payments requires proactive adoption incentives for both merchants and clients.

I. Liquidity Growth

A. Context & Phase I Results

The Liquidity Growth program deployed $130,000 in incentives over 9 months (versus the 6 months originally planned). The additional 3 months were the result of a deliberate decision to lower the deployment rate at the beginning of the program, in order to better calibrate distribution across pools, identify the highest-impact venues, and negotiate stronger co-incentivization terms with partners. This approach allowed the majority of the budget to be matched by at least $1 in incentives from partners.

The program has contributed to meaningful TVL growth across DEX liquidity pools and lending protocols on priority chains.

B. Phase II Renewal

We propose to renew the Liquidity Growth program for an additional 24 weeks (6 months) under the same framework as Phase I.

Budget: $96,000 total for 6 months ($4,000 per week for 24 weeks)
The Phase II Liquidity Growth budget will begin immediately upon completion of the Phase I Liquidity Growth budget, ensuring continuity with no gap in incentive coverage
Paid in two installments: $48,000 at approval, $48,000 at t+3 months
Program managed by Cooper Labs with discretionary deployment within the liquidity growth framework (DEX pools, lending markets, co-incentivization deals)

Priority chains for Phase II are HyperEVM, Base, Avalanche, and Ethereum, in line with the current deployment strategy.

II. Advertisements

A. Context:

The Phase I ads budget ($54,000) was managed on Spindl with a deliberately conservative spend rate. As of the submission of this proposal, approximately $42,000 remains unspent. The reduced rate was a conscious choice: retail market conditions are currently unfavorable for high-volume DeFi user acquisition, and running campaigns at full capacity in this environment produces poor cost-per-acquisition metrics. Maintaining a low but consistent rate preserves budget efficiency while keeping Parallel visible to relevant audiences.

B. Phase II Continuation

No additional budget is requested for Advertisements in Phase II. The $42,000 remaining from Phase I will continue to be deployed at a controlled rate over the coming months, managed by Cooper Labs, with the same targeting strategy as Phase I (on-chain audience segmentation via Spindl, coordinated with active partnerships and integrations).

Campaign spend rate will be adjusted upward if and when market conditions improve retail conversion rates. Cooper Labs will continue to publish transparency reports on campaign performance.

III. Agentic Payments I Cashback Program

A. Rationale

Parallel V3.2 is dedicated to x402 and Machine Payment Protocol (MPP) integrations, positioning USDp as the leading stablecoin for AI agent-initiated payments. As autonomous agents increasingly transact on-chain, paying for APIs, services, compute, and digital goods, the stablecoin they use by default will be determined by the incentives stack available at protocol level.

Coinbase has already moved in this direction with 1,000 free USDC transactions per month on x402. To compete and differentiate, Parallel must offer a compelling and sustained incentive to both the transacting agent (client side) and the merchant accepting payment (merchant side). A dual-sided cashback program is the most direct and effective mechanism to bootstrap USDp adoption in this emerging payment rail.

B. Program Design
The $10,000 monthly budget is split into two sub-programs:

• $8,000/month (80%): Agent Cashback
• $2,000/month (20%): Developer Bounties

1. Agent Cashback ($8,000/month)
Cashback is distributed in USDp on every x402/MPP payment made in USDp. It is calculated per agent per month using a degressive tier system:
Monthly spend (per agent)
Cashback rate

• $0 – $500: 1%
• $500 – $2,000: 0.5%
• $2,000 – $10,000: 0.2%
• Above $10,000: 0.1%

Cap: $50 in sUSDp cashback per agent per month.

Concrete examples:

• An agent spending $500/month receives $5 in sUSDp
• An agent spending $5,000/month receives $5 (first $500) + $7.50 ($500–$2,000) + $6 ($2,000–$5,000) = $18.50 in sUSDp
• An agent spending $50,000/month hits the $50 cap

At $8,000/month, the program covers between 160 agents at the cap ($50 each) and 1,600 small agents ($5 each), a realistic range for a launch phase.

The USDp distributed continues to generate yield for the agent, meaning the incentive compounds over time. Every USDp distributed also increases the TVL of the Savings Module.

2. Developer Bounties ($2,000/month)
10 bounties of up to $200 each per month, paid in USDp upon delivery, managed by Cooper Labs. First come, first served, technical validation by the team, no heavy process.

Examples of qualifying bounties:

• MCP plugin for an agent framework (LangChain, CrewAI, Eliza, etc.)
• SDK wrapper in a missing language
• x402/MPP + USDp tutorial with working code
• Example agent, dashboard, or bug fix

3. Gas Sponsoring (up to $1,000/month)
Parallel sponsors up to 1,000 transactions per address per month. Gas fees (not the transaction amount) are covered by the protocol. Beyond 1,000 transactions per month, the agent pays its own gas.

On Base at 0.005 gwei, an EIP-3009 transaction costs ~$0.00065. 1,000 transactions = ~$0.65 per address per month. Even with 1,000 active agents, gas sponsoring costs ~$650/month, a fraction of the cashback budget. It is virtually free on L2s, but the perceived impact is significant: agents no longer need to hold ETH to pay in USDp.

Gas sponsoring is limited to L2s and sidechains (Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, HyperEVM, etc.) where costs remain negligible. Ethereum mainnet is excluded (~$6.50 per transaction), where standard gas economics apply.

Success Metrics (at 3 months)

• Number of active agents
• x402 volume in USDp
• Number of MCP plugins published

If results are positive, Cooper Labs will submit a proposal to increase the program budget via a new PGP on the governance forum.

Means:

• Human Resources: Multisigners will need to sign and execute transactions to implement the proposal.
• Treasury Resources:
• $130,000 for 6 months of Liquidity Growth incentives (two payments of $48,000)
• $0 additional for Advertisements (continuation using ~$42,000 remaining from Phase I)
• $66,000 for 6 months of Agentic Payments cashback (two payments of $30,000 + six payments of $1,000)
• Total new allocation: $162,000

Technical Implementation:

On Ethereum, the DAO Multisig will:

• Transfer $48,000 of USDp/USDC from the Ethereum DAO Multisig to 0x876C4D1Bd31af0d99191fC896F15a3A97D71aaB3 (Cooper Labs Multisig) immediately upon approval of the proposal
• Transfer $48,000 of USDp/USDC from the Ethereum DAO Multisig to 0x876C4D1Bd31af0d99191fC896F15a3A97D71aaB3 (Cooper Labs Multisig) ) 3 months after the approval of the proposal
• Transfer $30,000 of USDp/USDC from the Ethereum DAO Multisig to 0x876C4D1Bd31af0d99191fC896F15a3A97D71aaB3 (Cooper Labs Multisig) immediately upon approval of the proposal
• Transfer $30,000 of USDp/USDC from the Ethereum DAO Multisig to 0x876C4D1Bd31af0d99191fC896F15a3A97D71aaB3 (Cooper Labs Multisig) 3 months after the approval of the proposal
• Transfer $1,000 of USDp/USDC from the Ethereum DAO Multisig to 0x876C4D1Bd31af0d99191fC896F15a3A97D71aaB3 (Cooper Labs Multisig) upon request of Cooper Labs, capped at $6,000

Voting Options:

• For the Marketing & Growth Strategy Phase II
• Against / Rework the Proposal
• Abstain

Author(s): Cooper Labs