Thetanuts Finance: $NUTS Reveal
In December 2023, we announced the launch of the Thetanuts Finance v3 Upgrade — which saw Thetanuts Finance pivot from being DeFi Option Vault (“DOV”) protocol, into a decentralized on-chain options protocol focused on altcoin options.
2024 also saw some other significant milestones:
• 3y since the launch of Thetanuts Finance v0.
• Achieving lifetime peak Total Notional Sold and TVL.
• 6mo since the launch of Thetanuts Finance Incentivized Alpha.
• Launch of our LRT Strategy Vaults allowing users to generate additional yields on their LRT assets.
These milestones allowed us to catapult ourselves to becoming the #1 DeFi Options Protocol by TVL per Defillama, something that the team has spent more than a year working on.
As such, we believe that it is now time to reveal $NUTS — the Governance token of Thetanuts Finance, and unveil the next step of our journey to build the leading DeFi options protocol.
Revealing $NUTS
Token Utility
$NUTS is the governance token of the Thetanuts Finance ecosystem, and will be used to achieve the long-term objectives of the protocol — including decentralization, governance, and incentives.
Holders will enjoy the following token utilities:
- veTokenomics & Gauge Voting: $NUTS can be staked to become $veNUTS at a 1:1 ratio — with holders of $veNUTS being able to participate in gauge voting for every component within the Thetanuts Finance ecosystem.
- Governance & Decentralization: Holders of $veNUTS will be able to participate in governing Thetanuts Finance toward its long-term objectives.
- Value Accrual: Fees earned by Thetanuts Finance will be accrued to the Treasury, in which the Thetanuts Finance DAO will have control over once governance is live.
- Boosted Emissions: Holders can further lock their $veNUTS to receive up to 1.5x Boosted Emissions on their liquidity incentives on Thetanuts Finance.
$NUTS can be staked to become $veNUTS at a 1:1 ratio, which can be linearly vested to become liquid $NUTS subject to a 90-day vesting period. $veNUTS holders will enjoy the features of being a member of the Thetanuts Finance community. $veNUTS can be locked up to 12 months for Boosted Emissions for providing liquidity on Thetanuts Finance, during which $veNUTS cannot be vested.
Token Distribution
$NUTS (ERC-20) will have a maximum supply of 10,000,000,000 tokens, and will have an initial circulating supply of ~7.5%.
The token distribution of $NUTS will be as follows:
- Community: 43.5%
- Investors: 11.9%
- Team: 20%
- Treasury: 20.1%
- Airdrop Season 1: 3.0%
- Public Sale: 1.0%
- Initial Liquidity: 0.5%
Liquidity Incentives
$NUTS will be used to achieve the long-term objectives of the protocol — including incentivizing liquidity on the core components of Thetanuts Finance v3. To ensure that incentives are directed toward long-term members of the community, Thetanuts Finance referenced and received inspiration from Curve’s pioneering vote-escrow model.
Liquidity incentives on Thetanuts Finance will be distributed in $veNUTS at the end of every epoch on Ethereum Mainnet, with $veNUTS becoming immediately productive after being claimed. To qualify for $veNUTS incentives, a user must also maintain a threshold in dLP relative to their TVL on Thetanuts Finance v3 throughout the epoch.
Holders of $veNUTS can receive up to 1.5x Boosted Emissions on their liquidity incentives on Thetanuts Finance when they lock their $veNUTS. This Boost Value can be calculated below. Users can choose to lock $veNUTS beyond their $veNUTS Lockable Threshold, but the user’s Boost Value will be still based on the $veNUTS Lockable Threshold.
Boost Value (capped at 1.5x Boost) = User Locked $veNUTS / $veNUTS Lockable Threshold * time weight * dLP weight;
where $veNUTS Lockable Threshold = User TVL on Thetanuts Finance / Total TVL on Thetanuts Finance * Circulating Locked $veNUTS
Inspired by Curve, liquidity incentives are expected to be distributed over an extended period of time — with 99% of liquidity incentives being distributed after >65 years. Specifically, emissions are reduced by a factor of 2 ^ (1 / 512) each week similar to Curve.
Dynamic Liquidity Provisioning
Liquidity pools on AMMs are essential for on-chain liquidity, enabling users to trade the native tokens of protocols (inc. $NUTS) in a permissionless manner. Users can provide liquidity to $NUTS pools on Uniswap v2 — thereby improving liquidity and depth for on-chain trading of $NUTS, while being eligible for fees on Uniswap v2 and $veNUTS emissions. Users can add $ETH or $NUTS on Ethereum Mainnet — which is then deposited into Uniswap v2’s $NUTS/$ETH liquidity pool in a 50/50 composition.
$NUTS Token Airdrop
We designed the $NUTS token airdrop in line with a number of considerations specific to Thetanuts Finance.
- Thetanuts Finance has been live since November 2021.
- The v3 Upgrade in December 2023 marked the start of the v3 Incentivized Alpha on Arbitrum, where users providing Trading Volume and TVL would be rewarded.
- We have had over >100,000 interactions on our campaigns on Galxe, Layer3, and Zealy.
- We launched LRT Strategy Vaults in March 2024.
Based on the above, we believe that the below criteria is most suitable in determining airdrop allocations.
Criteria 1: Historical TVL Contribution to Thetanuts Finance Basic Vaults
1.0% of $NUTS will be allocated to users who have interacted with Thetanuts Finance contracts since our inception and up until the v3 Incentivised Alpha. Users were measured based on their time-weighted TVL contribution from Nov 2021 to Dec 2023 in determining allocations in this tranche.
Criteria 2: Trading Volume Contribution to Thetanuts Finance v3
0.5% of $NUTS will be allocated to users based on their Trading Volume contribution on the v3 Incentivised Alpha. Actions that had impact on TVL contribution were Longs and Shorts.
Criteria 3: TVL Contribution to Thetanuts Finance v3
1.3% of $NUTS will be allocated to users based on their time-weighted TVL contribution.
- Within the v3 Incentivized Alpha, actions that had impact on TVL contribution include Shorts, Boost, Add Liquidity, and Lend.
- Within our LRT Strategy Vaults, users with TVL contribution on Ethereum Mainnet and Arbitrum were also rewarded.
Criteria 4: Participated in Thetanuts Finance’s Galxe, Layer3, and Zealy Campaigns
0.2% of $NUTS will be allocated to users that have participated in Thetanuts Finance’s quests on Galxe, Layer3, and Zealy campaigns.
Recipients will receive their rewards as $veNUTS, a staked representation of $NUTS — with users enjoying the features of being a member of the Thetanuts Finance community. $veNUTS will be subject to a vesting period to be unlocked for $NUTS — which is currently expected to be 3 months, although $veNUTS can be unlocked for NUTS immediately for a haircut.
Disclaimer
Notice on Prohibited Use — Restricted Persons: Thetanuts Finance and any related services are not offered to and may not be used by persons or entities who reside in, are citizens of, are located in, are incorporated in, or have a registered office in any restricted territory, as defined in Section 3 of our Terms of Service (each such person or entity from a restricted territory, a “Restricted Person”). For more information, refer to our Terms of Service.
