Maple’s SYRUP Stakers Vote to End Staking Rewards, Launch DAO Treasury

Maple Finance says it wants to use protocol revenue for “long-term sustainability” instead of staking rewards.

Maple Finance, a decentralized finance lending protocol operating on Solana and Ethereum, is set to sunset SYRUP staking rewards just under a year after the token’s launch. Staked SYRUP (stSYRUP) voted in favor of the move, first proposed in a Maple Improvement Proposal (MIP) on Oct. 24.

Voting on MIP-019, which began on Oct. 27, closed on Oct. 31, with over 99% of participating voting power in favor of the move. A total of 26 wallets participated in the vote, with 30% of voting power coming from a single address backing the proposal.

Per the proposal, instead of paying out staking rewards to holders of Maple’s native token SYRUP, a portion of platform revenue will be reallocated to a newly created Syrup Strategic Fund (SSF).

“As the protocol matures, distributing revenue through staking is less efficient than reinvesting in liquidity and protocol strength,” Maple’s proposal reads.

Under MIP-019, 25% of ongoing protocol revenue will be allocated to the SSF in Q4 this year to build a DAO treasury that contains SYRUP, alongside Bitcoin (BTC) and stablecoins. The strategic fund will be used for token buybacks, among other initiatives.

The proposal says the aim of the SSF is to let Maple “operate independently and sustainably, avoiding dilutive fundraising and forced selling in bear market environments.” Rewards streamed to stSYRUP holders will end at the close of the current vesting period, with on-chain streams ceasing in November.

As the Maple Finance team explained, the firm’s assets under management and revenue have grown in the past year, spurring the team to adjust how it manages revenue. “With AUM growing >10x since SYRUP’s launch and the protocol now generating ~$20M in ARR from fees, the Maple team believes it is time to evolve our approach and ensure long-term sustainability,” the team said.

Maple’s Moves

During the voting period, the SYRUP price jumped 13-%15% twice, hitting above $0.44, per data from CoinGecko. The token is up about 5% today as the broader crypto market recovers.

SYRUP 7-day price chart. Source: CoinGecko

As of press time, Maple Finance is the 18th-largest protocol in the DeFi space with about $3.3 billion in total value locked, per data from DefiLlama.

Maple Finance’s TVL. Source: DefiLlama

In its Q2 blog post, Maple Finance said it had surpassed BlackRock as the largest on-chain asset manager. Earlier this month, Maple announced a strategic partnership with Aave to bring institutional-grade assets into Aave’s lending markets.

As The Defiant reported last month, the market cap of Maple’s yield-bearing stablecoin syrupUSDC crossed the $1 billion mark, as institutional demand for on-chain yield grows.

Source: https://thedefiant.io/news/defi/stsyrup-holders-vote-to-end-staking-rewards-launch-syrup-strategic-fund