veTokenomics
Last updated 17 October 2026Last verified 17 October 2026
What is veTokenomics?
Vote-escrow token model. Users lock tokens for a period of time to receive voting power and often boosted yield. Locks in illiquidity in exchange for governance influence. Popularized by Curve (veCRV). Creates long-term alignment incentives but also creates secondary markets for governance influence (bribes) that the model's designers did not fully anticipate.
TradFi equivalentLoyalty shares, where voting power accrues to length of holding. Dual-class structures are not the parallel, since those votes are issued with the class rather than earned by locking. What has no clean equivalent is the bribe market, an open exchange for vote buying, which corporate law treats with suspicion rather than as a market.