Athena Tokenomics Revamp
We are excited to announce that we have completely revamped the tokenomics for Athena. This article details the updated distribution breakdown as well as why we decided to make these changes.
What’s changed?
After receiving feedback and having open discussions with our community, we have decided to significantly reduce the team allocation to ATH. We also reduced the Vector airdrop, and increased the cliff for our team. On the flip side, we allocated more tokens to the public sale and to liquidity mining. We also took this time to add in a small allocation to strategic partnerships within the Metis ecosystem — more on this later. Lastly, our graphic needed some work: the new graphic displays cliffs and vesting schedules for each category.
The ATH Token
First, we want to outline what the ATH token is and how it can be used.
ATH is the core token for the Athena Finance protocol. Users on Athena can lock it to receive a significant share of our protocol revenue, lock and vote on our gauges to receive bribes, and may find more utility as other protocols are added to Athena. Providing ATH liquidity will also receive incentives from the protocol.
ATH will be used to provide yield for users who convert and stake HUM, along with any other protocols we decide to aggregate. The general idea is to aggregate as much HUM as possible early on. Once we’ve gotten a significant amount, ATH emissions are lowered and xHUM becomes sustainable mostly on the fees generated from our protocol.
Distribution Overview
There will be a maximum token supply of 100M ATH tokens. The breakdown of these tokens and their vesting schedules are listed in the graphic below. We have also provided a detailed description of each allocation in this article.
Liquidity Mining
The liquidity mining program accounts for 60% of ATH token supply and is made up of three components:
1. xHUM staking
HUM conversion is the most important feature of the Athena protocol for generating long-term value for ATH. Thus, it is important for us to allocate a substantial portion of our emissions to xHUM stakers.
2. LP staking
To further enhance Athena’s success, we will need to have liquid capital markets in which users can enter and exit positions with ease. This goes for both our HUM-xHUM and ATH-METIS liquidity pools which we will host on Hermes.
3. Bonus Incentives
From time to time, the protocol may opportunistically offer bonus incentives to try to accumulate more HUM, more TVL from LPers, or more of another token.
Liquidity Mining Distribution
The distribution of these emissions will follow a logarithmic function, where the emission rate is higher early on and slows down over time. Incentivizing high yields for our earliest users ensures that Athena builds a solid base of HUM at the onset, which will increase the amount of veHUM we can earn in the long-run. This will result in long-term sustainable value and rewards for users into perpetuity.
A portion of our liquidity mining emissions will be used on an as-needed basis. If we see that our current emission rate is not high enough to be competitive with other protocols or the broader market, we will tap into our bonus emission supply to further incentivize rewards. These rewards can go towards xHUM stakers, LP stakers or other initiatives based on need.
Team
We’ve allocated 12% of our ATH token supply for the Athena team and its future employees to align interests with tokenholders. These tokens will have a 9 month cliff and then vest linearly over the following 12 months.
Public Sale
Athena is extremely excited to launch on Metis. We are building our own launchpad UI and smart contracts to do so! This public sale of ATH tokens will raise the liquidity we need for the protocol while giving the earliest access possible to buyers.
We’ve allocated 15% of our total token supply to the sale, whereby participants will receive ATH token, locked ATH token (LATH), and ATH-METIS LP tokens (locked for 2 weeks) — to help us bootstrap our liquidity for ATH.
Vector Allocation
Athena is built by the core team from Vector Finance — a DeFi hub and yield aggregator on Avalanche. Since Athena would not exist without Vector, we have allocated a portion of the token to VTX holders. 6% of ATH will be vested to VTX lockers. We also hope and anticipate that many users from Vector will be excited to use and deposit tokens on Athena, as well as explore other protocols on Metis.
The vest will proceed over a period of 12 months, starting at the launch of Athena. Users will receive locked ATH based on the amount of VTX they have locked, during that 12 month period. To measure this we’ll take 12 random snapshots throughout the year. After each Snapshot an amount of locked ATH will be distributed based on the snapshot. The first snapshot will occur very soon after the launch of Athena Finance.
This means that Athena team tokens are going to be distributed to a network of thousands of people who are passionate about DeFi, and they’ll have to bridge over to Metis to claim these tokens! May as well make a pit stop at Athena.
Community Treasury
4% of our token supply will be allocated to our community treasury. This treasury will be used for various purposes such as bug bounties, marketing, and community engagement. This community treasury will vest linearly over a period of 12 months starting at the public launch.
Strategic Partnerships
We’re building Athena to strengthen the Metis ecosystem. To further that goal, we’ve allocated 3% of our token supply for strategic partnerships with other protocols and groups. These partnerships may include a token swap or vested token sale, to further align strategic interests with the parties involved. This allocation will vest linearly over 12 months starting at the public launch.
What’s Next?
Our next article is coming today and will include details on our public sale which is coming very soon (end of May). It will include info on the exact date and time, as well as how you can participate!
Make sure to join all of our social accounts for the latest!
