The "Semi-Soft Lock" Paradox of veBR: Voting Rights without External Profits are Just a Consolation Prize
$BR has recently caught fire with the new buzz from Bedrock 2.0, but after digging around, I found a fatal flaw in the veBR "semi-soft lock" that nobody dares to call out: how much is the voting power you get from locking your assets really worth?
The logic of PoSL is that you can queue to unlock after staking for four weeks, which is touted as "lowering the barrier to entry." But this actually exposes an awkward reality—there might not be many users willing to commit to a hard lock. Bedrock still hasn’t dared to disclose the "percentage of addresses that have locked for more than a quarter", and I bet that number is painfully low. Because the essence of this game is: as soon as the APR drops and the incentive pool shrinks, those wanting to unlock become more eager than anyone else. @Bedrock
What’s even more heartbreaking is that when you lock BR for veBR, the votes determine how the protocol's income is distributed. The problem is, where does Bedrock's "income" come from? The meager earnings from ETH staking have already been eaten up by interest; EigenLayer points and AVS rewards haven't scaled up yet; and the bulk is all from $BR token inflation and subsidies from partners. To translate: what you’re voting on is how to distribute the tokens that the protocol prints itself, not real cash earned from outside.
This isn’t governance; it’s a hunger game of “robbing Peter to pay Paul.”
Curve’s veCRV stands strong because Curve has a stable cash flow from trading fees. What about Bedrock? Without a stable external profit source, veBR's voting rights are just gilded worthless paper. You lock your assets for four years and all you get is the right to decide who gets a bigger slice of the subsidy, not a dividend right.
So stop saying “locking BR is long-termism.” A lockup without real income backing it is essentially holding the protocol hostage. What you should be asking isn’t “is Bedrock 2.0 appealing?”, but rather: is the real cash that Bedrock earns each month from outside enough to provide dividends to those who lock up?
Until I sort out this calculation, I won’t be locking BR into veBR. No matter how flashy the voting rights are, they can’t fill the void of a lack of cash flow.
#Bedrock $BR
$BR has recently caught fire with the new buzz from Bedrock 2.0, but after digging around, I found a fatal flaw in the veBR "semi-soft lock" that nobody dares to call out: how much is the voting power you get from locking your assets really worth?
The logic of PoSL is that you can queue to unlock after staking for four weeks, which is touted as "lowering the barrier to entry." But this actually exposes an awkward reality—there might not be many users willing to commit to a hard lock. Bedrock still hasn’t dared to disclose the "percentage of addresses that have locked for more than a quarter", and I bet that number is painfully low. Because the essence of this game is: as soon as the APR drops and the incentive pool shrinks, those wanting to unlock become more eager than anyone else. @Bedrock
What’s even more heartbreaking is that when you lock BR for veBR, the votes determine how the protocol's income is distributed. The problem is, where does Bedrock's "income" come from? The meager earnings from ETH staking have already been eaten up by interest; EigenLayer points and AVS rewards haven't scaled up yet; and the bulk is all from $BR token inflation and subsidies from partners. To translate: what you’re voting on is how to distribute the tokens that the protocol prints itself, not real cash earned from outside.
This isn’t governance; it’s a hunger game of “robbing Peter to pay Paul.”
Curve’s veCRV stands strong because Curve has a stable cash flow from trading fees. What about Bedrock? Without a stable external profit source, veBR's voting rights are just gilded worthless paper. You lock your assets for four years and all you get is the right to decide who gets a bigger slice of the subsidy, not a dividend right.
So stop saying “locking BR is long-termism.” A lockup without real income backing it is essentially holding the protocol hostage. What you should be asking isn’t “is Bedrock 2.0 appealing?”, but rather: is the real cash that Bedrock earns each month from outside enough to provide dividends to those who lock up?
Until I sort out this calculation, I won’t be locking BR into veBR. No matter how flashy the voting rights are, they can’t fill the void of a lack of cash flow.
#Bedrock $BR