What is this about?

The discussion is centered on the Perennial incentives program, which began on November 6th and is managed by Lewi. The program aims to distribute weekly incentives through a Merkle Drop mechanism. The program has used 107,142.85 ARB for incentives, with the most recent disbursement being 125,000 ARB. A variety of contracts have been incentivized, including Ethereum, Bitcoin, Solana, Polygon, Celestia, Rollbit, Vault Alpha, and Vault Bravo. Season 2 of the ARB Rewards program is concluding, and it has been successful in increasing liquidity for Large Cap Vaults and encouraging trading activity for non-ETH/BTC markets^1,2.

How is the community reacting?

The community has shown a positive reaction to the incentives program, which has led to a new 24hr All-Time High (ATH) for Perennial V2 ($18mn) and over $87mn in aggregate volume. Open Interest has reached an all-time high of $12.6mn, and the program has contributed approximately $2mn in liquidity to Perennial Vaults, totaling $7mn for the protocol. The average daily total value locked (TVL) is around 7.2 million, with an average of 311 daily transactions and volumes around 3.1 million. There are 570 unique user addresses, and transaction fees amounted to $45,178.74, which are gas fees paid on Arbitrum^1,2.

Why this is positive?

• The incentives program has driven engagement and increased liquidity for the protocol.
• Proactive measures are in place to review data and adjust reward distribution for effectiveness.
• Steps have been taken to counteract gaming of the system, such as wash trading and wallet sybilling, ensuring fair distribution of rewards.
• The program has successfully grown liquidity for Large Cap Vaults and bootstrapped trading for various assets.
• Incentives have been awarded for behaviors that are difficult to exploit, like top profit and loss (PnL) and volume users on the platform^1,2.

Why this is negative?

• The specific contracts to be incentivized in the upcoming two weeks were initially unspecified, causing some uncertainty¹.
• Instances of users attempting to game the system have been reported, necessitating the implementation of measures to nullify such rewards and indicating potential misuse¹.

Next actions

The plan for the next two weeks includes distributing the same amount of ARB (107,143 ARB) to the same contracts as before. The distribution will continue to use the Merkle Drop mechanism, with a focus on user acquisition and attracting users from other chains into the Arbitrum ecosystem².