Decentralised organisations use blockchains as a basis for governance: they use on-chain transactions to allocate voting weight, publish proposals, cast votes, and enact the results. However, blockchain-based governance structures have challenges, mostly notably, the need to align the short-term outlook of pseudononymous voters with the long-term growth and success of the decentralised organisation. The Vote-Escrowed Token (veToken) model attempts to resolve this tension by requiring voters to escrow or lock tokens of value for an extended period in exchange for voting weight. In this paper, we describe the veToken model and analyse its emergent outcomes. We show that voting behaviour follows bribes set by higher-level protocols, and that the cost per vote varies depending on how it is acquired. We describe the implementation of the veToken model by Curve Finance, a popular automated market maker for stablecoins, and the ecosystem of protocols that has arisen on top of this implementation. We show that voting markets such as Votium largely determine the outcome of fortnightly votes held by Convex Finance, and we show that Frax Finance, a stablecoin issuer, plays a central role in the ecosystem even though they directly lock relatively few tokens with Curve. Instead, they indirectly lock tokens through yield aggregators such as Convex Finance and purchase voting weight through voting markets such as Votium. Although the veToken model in isolation is straight-forward and easily explained, it leads to many complex and emergent outcomes. Decentralised organisations should consider these outcomes before adopting the model.

翻译：去中心化组织以区块链作为治理基础：它们使用链上交易来分配投票权重、发布提案、投票并执行结果。然而，基于区块链的治理结构面临挑战，最显著的是需要将匿名投票者的短期视角与去中心化组织的长期增长和成功相协调。投票托管代币（veToken）模型试图通过要求投票者长期锁定有价值的代币以换取投票权重来解决这一矛盾。在本文中，我们描述了veToken模型并分析了其新兴结果。我们表明投票行为遵循高层协议设定的贿赂，且每次投票的成本取决于其获取方式。我们描述了由Curve Finance（一种流行的稳定币自动做市商）实施的veToken模型，以及在该实施基础上兴起的协议生态系统。我们展示了诸如Votium等投票市场在很大程度上决定了Convex Finance每两周一次投票的结果，并表明稳定币发行商Frax Finance在生态系统中扮演了核心角色，尽管其直接锁定在Curve的代币相对较少。相反，他们通过收益聚合器（如Convex Finance）间接锁定代币，并通过投票市场（如Votium）购买投票权重。尽管veToken模型本身直接易懂，但它导致了许多复杂且新兴的结果。去中心化组织在采用该模型前应考虑这些结果。