Maverick Protocol has built the world’s most capital-efficient non-order book AMM, redefining liquidity provisioning and incentivization efficiency. By optimizing fee generation for LPs and maximizing incentive budgeting for token projects, Maverick has been making DeFi more efficient and sustainable.
Maverick has always been at the forefront of exploring and contributing to new initiatives in DeFi. In that spirit, Maverick is joining Optimism’s decentralized governance experiment to test futarchy as a decision-making mechanism.
As part of this experiment, Maverick core contributors are posting this proposal to outline how the protocol plans to deploy the proposed 100k OP grant to drive optimized TVL growth on Base, part of the Optimism Superchain. This proposal will highlight why Maverick is uniquely positioned to achieve these growth targets and how its approach will create lasting value for the ecosystem.
If Maverick receives a 100K OP grant, the Protocol will use it to incentivize strategic Boosted Positions on Maverick on Base, in order to increase TVL across core pairs. Boosted Positions are incentivized liquidity distributions in Maverick pools, which enable incentives to be directed to extremely precise ranges and configurations of token liquidity. This allows Maverick to offer some of the highest incentive efficiency in DeFi, and has helped Maverick become a leading DEX in terms of volume and capital efficiency on Ethereum, Base, and other L2s.
Since Maverick is already integrated with all the major aggregators on Base (including 1inch, Odos, and Paraswap), this efficient liquidity will function to improve market depth for these token pairs on Base, ensuring more stable pricing for swappers–regardless of whether they swap through Maverick’s UI.
Based on existing incentive data, Maverick projects a 100k OP grant distributed over 3 months will result in $4m worth of TVL being added to Base, and thus to the Superchain.
The most compelling data for this prediction comes from Maverick’s performance in the first four rounds of the ZKIgnite program. Since the start of this program, ZKIgnite has streamed $347,659.33 worth of ZK rewards to Maverick Boosted Positions, resulting in almost $12m of new TVL. ZKIgnite has been steadily increasing their incentive commitment to Maverick with each round, reflecting their satisfaction with Maverick’s performance in these early rounds.
At time of writing, we are in Round 4 of the program, with $131,483.49 currently distributed across four Boosted Positions that have a combined TVL of $11,895,294.73. This results in a collective incentive APR of 28.82%. Individually, the four Boosted Positions have a wider range of APRs, from 7.53% in the WETH-zkETH Boosted Position to 84.8% in the WETH-ZK Boosted Position. This difference is likely a result of LPs’ tastes for assets, combined with the volatility risk and natural yield of individual tokens.
What this means for the Futarchy grant is that there is very likely room for optimization, if the primary goal is just to build Superchain TVL using the 100k OP. ZKSync, for example, has a vested interest in promoting ZK liquidity, and so is happy to incentivize a higher incentive APR on that Boosted Position with the goal of attracting more TVL to that pair in particular.
On Base, Maverick would use the 100k OP to target Boosted Positions where the data shows that LPs are happy to accept a lower incentive APR, e.g., stable pairs (USDC-USDC.e currently has a 16.98% incentive APR) or LST pairs like the WETH-zkETH Boosted Position (7.53% incentive APR).
100k OP streamed over 90 days would give an effective USD/day value of $1,188.89. Using this as a baseline, Maverick can project that it is possible to achieve min $4m in TVL growth provided that the Protocol can stabilize an APR of 10-11% across the chosen Boosted Positions. Maverick aims to achieve this through the careful selection of incentivized pairs and through strong marketing efforts to guide LPs into these new opportunities.
While ZKIgnite has been unlocking great growth in TVL on Maverick, it should be added that a Maverick-administered grant offers further avenues for optimization. Under the ZKIgnite program, LPs have to wait to learn which Boosted Positions will be incentivized in a given round, and potentially move their TVL between Boosted Positions to follow if opportunities change. Moreover, LPs currently have to add liquidity through the Maverick frontend and claim rewards through Ignite’s hub.