Gamified THALES staking 2.0
Improved THALES staking
Since TIP-135 was approved by the Thales Council, we started working on establishing the new staking UI, leaderboard, and new point-based mechanics for the overhauled gamified THALES staking mechanism…
And today is the day it's released!
The main motivations for this TIP implementation were to:
- Encourage stakers to keep using the protocol by removing caps on the share % of the bonus rewards. Basically, more points more rewards!
- Adjust volume-based period from 4 weeks to 1 week
- Gamify the staking experience even further (points, leaderboard)
- Reduce rewards to idle stakers
- Simplify things 🙌
So, with that in mind, the Thales devs and designers set up to deliver this new staking platform.
But before we move on, if you are looking for the main TLDR on what you need to do as a THALES staker:
- Rewards from the last period are claimable on the new UI
- From now on, to figure out how many rewards you are getting for the current period, you’ll have to look at the leaderboard
- Bonus rewards now take into account the last 1-week period for protocol usage and uses a point-based system to calculate your rewards
- You can start accruing points for the weekly bonus rewards right now
- There is no cap on your share % of weekly bonus rewards
- The rewards (both base and bonus) for the current period will be claimable next week when the new period starts.
With that brief out of the way, let’s jump right into how this works!
THALES staking explained
The THALES token is used to govern the Thales DAO and it’s staked (or temporarily locked on a smart contract) to obtain voting power, which is used to elect the Thales Council members. The Thales Council votes on the implementation of TIPs (Thales Improvement Proposals) and its elected every 4 months.
Staking THALES can be done in either Optimism or Arbitrum.
The THALES stakers are able to claim the main inflationary THALES token rewards once a week.
The THALES staking rewards must be claimed each week before the next week’s snapshot is taken (on Wednesdays at around 13:00 UTC) or they expire. You can find an automated solution for weekly claiming in our documentation here.
Staking rewards, once claimed, are moved for 10 weeks into an Escrow contract (they still count as part of your staked balance, but cannot be unstaked until they are moved out of the Escrow contract). After the 10 weeks have passed you are able to vest those rewards.
The THALES staking rewards can be divided into two buckets or categories: Base rewards and Bonus rewards
The ratio of THALES rewards is 2:1 for the relationship between Base and Bonus.
On Optimism is:
- 60,000 THALES per week as Base rewards
- 30,000 THALES per week as Bonus rewards
And on Arbitrum is:
- 20,000 THALES per week as Base rewards
- 10,000 THALES per week as Bonus rewards
Now, let’s dive into each section of this new gamified staking system.
Base rewards
For those who’ve been staking THALES before this release, everything related to the base rewards stays the same.
To calculate how many base rewards you’ll receive you’ll need to obtain your staked share % in relation to all the THALES tokens staked on that chain (be it Optimism or Arbitrum), and then apply that % to the total of base rewards for that same chain… but fear not!
To make this easy to understand you can scroll all the way down on the staking page to get this information in a simple way, no need to calculate anything.
So, for example, if you stake 59,517.70 THALES on Optimism (like on the screenshot) and there are 16,520,349.96 THALES tokens staked there, then your staked share is 0.36%, so you’ll be able to claim 0.36% of all Base rewards for that chain (60,000 THALES), giving you a total of 216.16 THALES tokens rewards for that weekly period.
Understood? Moving on!
Bonus rewards
Besides the Base rewards for all THALES stakers, there is also another rewards category for those who also utilize Thales products across the spectrum, including Overtime markets.
To distribute these rewards a gamified approach has been considered and implemented, where some game elements have been introduced (like points and a leaderboard) with the idea to simplify its understanding and boost the protocol usage.
The amount of bonus rewards to be distributed each week is 30,000 THALES on Optimism and 10,000 THALES on Arbitrum
Point system
The new bonus rewards mechanics considers different protocol activities (Trading, AMM Liquidity Providing, and Depositing in Vaults) to give points.
At the end of each weekly period, all these points generated by all THALES stakers who also used the protocol are summed up. This gives us the Total Global points.
Your % share of the Total Global points will dictate what % of the total Bonus rewards you’ll get.
It’ll become clearer as we dive in and get through some examples.
Please note that the original implementation has been updated with TIP-160 parameters:
Trading volume points = 1x (no changes)
AMM LP points = 0.5x ➡️ 0.25x
Vaults points = 0.25x (no changes)
Max THALES Staked Multiplier = 5x ➡️ 3xAll examples through this post have been updated.
Trading volume points
Trading Volume points are accrued by driving trading volume through Thales Markets (any market counts: UP, DOWN, IN, or OUT) and Overtime Markets. For every 1 USD of volume driven across Thales products, you get 1 point. This means that your total points from Trading Volume are equal to the sum of your total USD Trading Volume from Thales Markets and Overtime Markets (multiplied by 1).
Remember that the trading period to be considered is 1 week, between weekly snapshots.
You can easily check your total volume and points on the staking page.
AMM Liquidity Providing points
AMM LP points are accrued by depositing USD into any of the AMM Liquidity Pools across Thales products (ThalesAMM pool, SportsAMM pool, and ParlayAMM pool). For each 1 USD deposited into an LP pool you get 0.25 points. This means that your total points from AMM LP-ing are equal to multiplying the sum of your total USD deposits from Thales Markets and Overtime Markets LP pools by 0.25.
You can easily check your total AMM LP deposits and points on the staking page.
Vaults points
Vaults Points are accrued by depositing USD into any of the available Vaults across Thales products (Thales Markets Vaults and Overtime Markets Vaults). For each 1 USD deposited into a Vault, you get 0.25 points. This means that your total points from Vaults deposits are equal to multiplying the sum of your total Vaults USD deposits by 0.25.
You can easily check your total Vault deposits and points on the staking page.
THALES Staked multiplier
And the last piece of this calculation, the amount of THALES you have staked determines the multiplier for your total points. The more THALES you stake, the higher the final multiplier of your total points.
THALES Staked Multiplier = 1 + (UserThalesStaked / 100,000)
This multiplier's minimum value is 1 and the maximum value is 3.
So, following the previous example, if you have 55,710.88 THALES staked, then your THALES Staked Multiplier will be x 1.56
Putting it all together: the total points
So, your total points that determine your share of the THALES Gamified Staking Bonus rewards are equal to the sum of all your accrued points (Trading, AMM LP, and Vault points) multiplied by the THALES Staked Multiplier.
The total points for the calculation of Base Rewards can be checked in real-time on the THALES staking page under “Your current total points”.
And with this last piece of information, the current total points, you can see how many of the Bonus rewards you’ll be able to claim, depending on what % of the Total Global points (among all the stakers who did any bonus activity) it represents. So, basically, your % of Total Points equals your % of Bonus Rewards 💡
If, for example, there were 1,245,066.49 points generated among all THALES stakers during a weekly period on Optimism, and you generated 5,250.49 points (0.42% of all the points generated by all users for that weekly period) on that same chain, then you’ll be able to claim 0.42% of all bonus rewards (30,000 THALES) for that weekly period, so that would be 126.51 THALES.
And as a reminder, there are 30,000 THALES on Optimism and 10,000 THALES on Arbitrum to be distributed each week as Bonus Rewards!
Rank and leaderboard
If you notice the last screenshot, on the top left corner of “Your current point” there’s a badge with a rank that reflects how are you faring compared to all the other THALES stakers chasing the bonus rewards.
To also potentiate that competitive spirit, in this release we also included a new leaderboard where you can try and get a spot in.
Flexing allowed!
Questions?
We know this is a lot of information to cover in one sit, so here are a few resources and useful links for you:
THALES token staking
THALES token explained
Documentation (and detailed screenshots) about staking THALES tokens: Optimism and Arbitrum
TIP-135 (detailing the staking mechanism change)
TIP-160 (detailing an update in parameters)
And if you still have questions or comments we’ll be happy to help on Thales Discord.
Jump into Discord, share with the community, and enjoy the new staking mechanism!
