Votium

Votium is a bribe marketplace where protocols pay to influence Convex voters' veCRV allocations toward specific Curve gauges. It routes bribes to vlCVX holders who vote on emissions — no standalone governance token.

The primary off-chain coordination layer for Curve bribes via Convex voters — rent liquidity by paying vlCVX holders directly.

- Incentive Auction (VotiumBribe / Deposit contract): The marketplace where incentive buyers (protocols) deposit whitelisted ERC20 tokens to reward voters who direct Convex vlCVX (and Curve veCRV) gauge votes toward a chosen pool. Buyers select a payment token, amount, target pool, and (for Curve) which of the next 6 weekly votes to incentivise, and can top up the incentive until the round closes. - Snapshot Delegation: vlCVX holders delegate their Convex voting power to Votium (votium.eth) once via Snapshot's Gnosis Delegate Registry. Delegation is non-custodial and persists across CVX lock/unlock/buy/sell; Votium then votes delegated power to capture the highest-value incentives each round. veCRV voting rights cannot currently be delegated. - Multi Merkle Stash (MerkleDistributor): An updateable Merkle-airdrop distributor contract (of the type used by Sushi and others) that distributes collected incentives to eligible voters. After a round ends the multisig posts a Merkle root; users claim their share (or let it accrue across rounds to save gas). Deployed on Ethereum at 0x378ba9b73309be80bf4c2c027aad799766a7ed5a. - Multisig Admin: A team multisig controls all fund-touching functions across the contracts (VotiumBribe.sol, MerkleDistributor.sol, VotiumVeCRV.sol): setting the maintenance fee (hard-capped at 4%), fee recipient, team permissions, token whitelist, updating Merkle roots, and pausing/resuming claims.

- Votium (no native token) (—) — Token, No native token

- Smart Contract: Votium is described as experimental software provided 'as is'. Users interact with the auction/deposit contract, the Snapshot/Gnosis delegate registry, and the updateable Merkle airdrop distributor — any bug in these could cause loss of deposited incentives or unclaimed rewards despite an external audit (Blockian). - Governance: A team multisig controls all fund-affecting functions — fee level (up to the 4% hard cap), fee recipient, token whitelist, team permissions, and critically the Merkle root and claim pause. A compromised or malicious multisig could post an incorrect root or halt distributions. No public timelock is documented. - Counterparty: Incentive buyers must trust that delegated/self-directed votes are cast and counted correctly, and voters must trust that Votium computes each round's Merkle distribution honestly and in proportion to delegated vlCVX and incentive size. Distribution is computed off-chain before the root is posted. - Systemic: Votium is entirely dependent on external systems it does not control: Convex (vlCVX locking and vote power), Curve (gauge weights and the ~10-day cooldown on gauge changes), and Snapshot (delegation and vote signalling). Failure, deprecation, tokenomics changes, or governance shifts in Convex or Curve directly impair Votium's usefulness and reward flow. - Regulatory: The core activity — paying token holders in exchange for how they vote in protocol governance ('vote buying') — sits in an unsettled legal/regulatory area for DAO governance and could attract scrutiny; participants bear this uncertainty.

- Corporate proxy-vote solicitation / proxy advisory: similar — Like a proxy solicitor gathering shareholder votes for a corporate resolution, Votium aggregates delegated voting power (vlCVX) and directs it in shareholder-style gauge votes on behalf of many small holders who would otherwise not vote.; differs — Votium voters are explicitly paid ('incentivised') by the parties seeking their votes, distribution is on-chain and permissionless, there is no fiduciary/regulatory framework, and the votes govern emission subsidies rather than corporate control. - Political lobbying / campaign contributions marketplace: similar — Protocols openly pay to influence how a governance body allocates a shared resource (Curve token emissions), analogous to lobbying spend directed at influencing an appropriations decision.; differs — Payments are transparent, on-chain, auction-priced per vote, and flow directly to the voters rather than to intermediaries or officials; the 'policy' being bought is purely economic (which liquidity pool gets more CRV rewards).