Other · Governance · PAL
Paladin runs Paladin Vote — a bribe marketplace for liquidity gauge incentives — and liquid locker products that wrap vote-escrow positions while retaining voting rights. PAL governs the protocol.
Vote-marketplace and liquid lockers for governance tokens.
Protocol TVL
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Combines bribe marketplaces with liquid locker infrastructure so depositors keep voting power on locked governance positions.
Paladin's flagship gauge-vote incentive marketplace. Incentive providers create a 'Quest' targeting a specific gauge, set a target amount of votes and a reward budget in whitelisted tokens over a fixed duration, which fixes the cost-per-vote in advance. Rewards are distributed to voters who fill the target (sorted oldest-to-newest vote); unfilled budget is refundable. Supports Curve (veCRV), Balancer, Bunni, and f(x) Protocol gauges.
A yield-bearing governance index over the Convex (CVX) and Aura (AURA) ecosystems. Users mint the WAR token by depositing CVX and/or AURA; the underlying is vote-locked and delegated by Paladin to optimize vote incentives. Staking WAR (stkWAR) earns rewards distributed in WETH, with BAL/CRV harvested as auraBAL/cvxCRV and any AURA/CVX auto-compounded into more WAR. Launched June 2023.
The governance token of Paladin DAO, minted 1:1 by staking PAL. hPAL accrues PAL rewards and can be locked for 3 months to 2 years for boosted rewards (up to a x6 multiplier at 2-year lock) and enhanced voting power (locks over 1 year grant +50% voting power). Staking withdrawal requires a 10-day cooldown plus a 2-day unstaking window.
The original non-custodial governance lending market. Lenders deposit a governance token into a PalPool and receive a yield-bearing PalToken (ERC20); borrowers rent voting power via a PalLoan clone contract that delegates governance power to them without transferring the underlying tokens. PalLoan ownership is represented by a transferable PalLoanToken (ERC721). Initial assets targeted UNI, COMP and AAVE.
A delegation service where holders of vote-locked tokens (vlCVX, vlAURA, vlLIQ) delegate voting power to Paladin, which optimizes vote allocation across incentive platforms to maximize yield while reducing gas cost and dilution.
A vault product generating passive income for stkAAVE holders and offering reduced interest rates for GHO borrowers on Aave. Audited by Pessimistic in April 2023.
Romain Figuereo
PR Newswire seed announcementParis, France
FinSMEs seed funding reportPAL (staked/locked as hPAL for Paladin DAO governance)
Paladin Docs - Holy PAL (hPAL)100,000 PAL/month initially, declining to 25,000 PAL/month over 2 years
Paladin Docs - Holy PAL (hPAL)Curve, Balancer, Bunni, f(x) Protocol gauges
Paladin Docs - OverviewHow Paladin maps onto established TradFi structures, and where it diverges.
Proxy-vote solicitation / proxy advisory market
Paladin
Like a proxy solicitation firm that gathers shareholder votes behind a resolution, Paladin's Quest lets a project pay to align governance voters (veCRV/gauge voters) behind a specific outcome, and its delegation/Autovoter aggregates voting power much like a proxy advisor concentrates votes.
TradFi analogue
Everything is on-chain, permissionless and priced by a transparent per-vote formula rather than negotiated advisory fees; votes are rented or incentivized directly via smart contracts rather than solicited through registered intermediaries, and there is no regulatory proxy-statement regime.
Securities lending
Paladin
Paladin Lending mirrors securities lending: a holder lends out an asset's embedded rights (here, voting power) to a borrower for a fee/yield while the position stays economically theirs, comparable to lending shares so a borrower can vote or short.
TradFi analogue
Only the voting/governance right is transferred via delegation (the underlying tokens never leave the pool), it is non-custodial and collateral-managed by smart contracts, and there is no central agent-lender or recall mechanism.
Romain Figuereo
Founder Founder of Paladin, based in Paris, France. Led the protocol's development of a vote lending market and its $2.55M seed round in 2021.
Paladin DAO
Governance body The DAO that governs the Paladin protocol, controlled by hPAL (Holy PAL) holders who vote on key decisions via the governance forum (gov.paladin.vote). Locked hPAL over 1 year receives +50% voting power.
Key milestones: launches, upgrades, exploits and governance events.
$2.55M seed round announced
ExecutedPaladin raised a $2.55M seed round led by Greenfield One, with Galaxy Digital, NFX, Semantic and ~20 angels, to build its vote lending market.
SourceQuest launched for Curve gauge voting
ExecutedQuest released as a per-vote-priced incentive marketplace for veCRV gauge voting, later expanding to Balancer, Bunni and f(x) Protocol.
SourceWarlord (WAR governance index) launched
ExecutedLaunch of the WAR index over CVX and AURA with stkWAR staking paying WETH and auto-compounding governance rewards.
SourcePaladin is a DeFi ecosystem of governance protocols and markets that unlock the value of on-chain voting power. Its products let token holders lend, delegate, incentivize, or index governance power, turning votes into a yield-bearing 'money lego'. Core products include the Quest vote-incentive marketplace, the Warlord (WAR) governance index, hPAL liquid staking, and Paladin Lending.
Quest calculates the value of a vote in advance, so an incentive provider fixes a cost-per-vote and total budget before the round. Rewards go to voters who fill the target objective (sorted oldest-to-newest), rewarding loyalty, and any unfilled budget is refundable pro-rata. Unlike Votium-style auctions where you can be outbid and lose your spend, Quest gives predictable pricing and returns unused budget.
WAR is a governance index token minted by depositing CVX and/or AURA. Warlord vote-locks the underlying and delegates it to earn vote incentives. Staking WAR (stkWAR) pays rewards in WETH, harvests BAL/CRV as auraBAL/cvxCRV, and auto-compounds earned AURA/CVX into more WAR. Users redeem WAR for the underlying, which is queued for each asset's unlock date.
PAL is Paladin's native governance token. hPAL (Holy PAL) is the staked/locked version used to govern Paladin DAO: staking PAL mints hPAL 1:1 and accrues PAL rewards, while locking hPAL for 3 months to 2 years boosts rewards (up to x6) and grants extra voting power. Staked hPAL requires a 10-day cooldown plus 2-day unstaking window to withdraw.
Depositors put a governance token into a PalPool and receive a PalToken representing their share plus yield. A borrower opens a PalLoan, a clone contract that holds the borrowed tokens and delegates their voting power to the borrower for the loan duration, without ever transferring the underlying tokens to the borrower directly.
