Origins of ve(3,3)

Is it just another buzzword?

If you've participated in DeFi for some time you would have probably seen the surge of new decentralized exchanges utilizing the buzz word "ve(3,3)" but what really is it?

Origins

The concept of ve(3,3) was imagined and introduced by Andre Cronje with his original deployment of Solidly as a proof-of-concept and entirely open-source. Prior to the new liquidity solutions like Concentrated Liquidity, liquidity providers(LP's) were rarely incentivized via fee generation so many exchanges had to add emissions from what we now call farms. The result of a inflationary token sacrificed in the name of high APRs was a difficult-to-manage depreciated asset.

With little to no incentive to buy or hold this token after the DeFi surge of 2021 many DEX's had to make mass pivots to ensure long-time platform user's did not rotate/exit to the next fork. Some moved into a revenue sharing model as well as many other obfuscating layers to ultimately bottleneck supply and increase utility of that token.

Presumably this is what sparked Andre's vision to develop the Solidly Model utilizing many popularized DEX mechanics as well as emissions token utility to boot. Users could now take emissions earned from farming or swapping for the token and convert into a veRAM model. Creating a locked escrowed contract wrapped in a ERC-721 or NFT.

This veRAM could now vote weekly on any pair on the platform to direct the following week of emissions. In return the voter is subject to earning some of the platforms generated fees, and partner incentives.