Problems

• Gauge-weight wars, as observed on Curve.fi from time to time can be detrimental to LPs in the long run.
• The short burst of insanely high APYs provided by weekly gauge changes are profitable to only a handful, with a large amount of assets.
• Gauge-weights at times end up swaying rewards to pools that actually don't bring much in terms of volume to the ecosystem, this leads to a problem where LPs get higher APYs in a low volume pool as opposed to being rewarded for supplying liquidity to a more active pool.
• Gauge-weights add unpredictability to longer term returns, and push the LPs to re-evaluate their strategies ever so often.
• Guage-weights force LPs within Swerve to compete against each other.

Proposal

Short Term

Have a phased-out update to gauge weights instead of abrupt in case if the gauge-weight change would cause more than X % of change. So instead of a whale pumping in X in a certain gauge, and pre-timing the deposit to make use of it for benefit, if the X is large enough to cause a significant change, then enable a gradual shift instead of abrupt.

Details:

• Choose a function X to slowly make gauge-weight changes.
• Extend the function over Y period of time.
• Now whenever gauge-weight votes happen (every week) the max INSTANT change is limited due to the gradual increase/decay.
• Show up a progress sort of thing where current weight is what it is, and a target of where it has to reach, and the time it would take to reach there.
• Gives enough time to everyone to plan and shift and allocate capital in advance, rebalancing everything in harmony.

Longer Term

• Andrew has proposed using prediction markets to calculate estimated admin fees based on pool volume, and offer a share of the admin fee to incentivise more favourable gauge-weights that are in line with the best returns for the entire ecosystem.
• More discussion is needed on longer term strategies and approach.

Benefits

• No gauge- wars.
• More harmony within the ecosystem, where every pool works together for the best outcome and puts up a unified front against competitors instead of competing internally.
• No opportunistic whale mining.
• No alpha on being early in a high gauge weight pool right at the weekly change.

Disadvantages

• Reduces game theory element for whales and potential alpha for front-runners.
• Reduces overall ecosystem competition in favour of harmony, if human history has shown us anything - wars are good, peace is bad.

Implementation

• This would require a redeployment of Gauge Weight Controller with proposed modification.
• Andrew has proposed the following formula which would require only one state variable.

gw = c * gw + (1 - c) * lastGw

Where: gw = gaugeweight lastGw = previous gauge weight c = free parameter

Discuss: https://gov.swerve.community/t/sip-14-beyond-gauge-weight-wars/97

PS: Considering most of the community members have locked their SWRV in preparation for on-chain votes, this proposal uses Block 10,886,360 (same as SIP-10, SIP-12, SIP-9-T4) for SWRV snapshot so everyone can vote the SWRV they held earlier prior to locking.