Auto-Bribes and The Pearl Flywheel

The Pearl thesis is a ve(3,3) flywheel that runs in reverse with bribes driving the ecosystem forward.

We believe that the success of the Solidly flywheel is wholly dependent on bribes and that token price and therefore TVL follow bribes not vice versa. Therefore for Pearl to succeed it is essential that we grow bribes each epoch. Unfortunately there is no guaranteed way to accomplish this by relying on traditional protocol bribers. As we’ve seen play out, protocols have consistently reduced their bribes once native token price decreases and yield starts to fall.

So how can we possibly guarantee that bribes will increase each epoch? Well we can’t, but with the right type of token integrated into Pearl, we could guarantee that bribes increase as TVL increases…

INTRODUCING AUTO-BRIBES

We’re excited to announce that we have aligned with Tangible as a key strategic partner in the development of Pearl. More details here.

This partnership will ensure one of the largest bribers on Solidly forks is bribing weekly on Pearl.

But more important are auto-bribes. It is a requirement for all pairs with gauges on Pearl to pair with USDR, Tangible’s stablecoin. It is backed by tokenized real estate and delivers a native APY of 8%+ sourced off-chain from rental yield.

Taking inspiration from Balancer’s BIP-19, this native APY is skimmed by Pearl and used to auto-bribe the pool from which it is sourced, leading to a sustainable, self regenerating flywheel.

Here’s how it works:

1. Liquidity pool voters receive USDR yield via auto-bribing system (yield skimming)
2. Increasing value of sticky bribes drive demand for vePearl to receive bribes and pool fees
3. This drives up demand for Pearl and its price
4. Pearl emissions are now more valuable
5. TVL increases as users provide liquidity to gain free access to Pearl
6. USDR auto-bribes expand as TVL expands

Let’s take a look at what this means in practice for locked $PEARL token holders:

Curve TVL as of writing this is $4.84bn, bribes in the most recent epoch (44) were a total of $3,413,198 across both CRV and CVX. Epochs on Curve last for 2 weeks.

On Pearl, at that same TVL as Curve, auto-bribes sourced from USDR would be $7,446,153 across two weeks (1 epoch on Curve). That is 118.15% more money going to vePERAL holders than Curve voters receive. And this doesn’t include projects recycling bribes from the previous epoch.

So bribes, on a dollar for dollar TVL basis, will be at least 2x Curve sourced from auto-bribes alone. And fully sustainable given their off-chain source. As covered in our past two articles on protocol analysis, incentives matter. They are key to driving action and disrupting entrenched power. This is what makes Pearl different and why we believe Pearl can be a success where others have failed.

This is the power of the Pearl flywheel.