iETH Migration and iBTC Launch
Most stakers in the iETH incentive should be aware that if ETH hits $315.28 iETH will reach its lower limit and it will be frozen, this would require everyone in the staking contract to unstake so that the normal purge process can be performed and iETH reset. The issue with this is that it is possible some people do not unstake meaning we will not be able to purge them as the sUSD would be trapped in the staking rewards contract. We have recently upgraded and had audited a few changes to the Staking Rewards contract that resolves this issue. Now we will be able to provide a short window for users to unstake and then any remaining iETH in the contract can be purged, recovered and airdropped back to stakers by the protocolDAO. This will ensure we can quickly reset iETH and resume the incentives. To facilitate this transition we will deposit the iETH rewards into the new contract tomorrow 02:00 UTC. All iETH stakers will need to migrate before then to ensure they continue to receive rewards. We will be compressing the rewards for iETH to a six day window this week so all rewards will still be earned by stakers and no incentives will be lost.
In order to migrate if you are staking iETH please go to Mintr and click on the LP Rewards tab, then select the iETH incentive and unstake, you will then be able to restake into the new contract. This is live now in Mintr.
In addition to the iETH migration we are also launching a four week trial of iBTC incentives. Rewards are live as of the publication of this post. Go to Mintr and stake your iBTC to participate. This will test whether demand can be generated for iSynths other than iETH through staking incentives as well as help narrow the current sBTC skew. The incentives for iBTC will be 16k SNX per week for four weeks after which we will review them and determine if we continue the trial.
The iETH incentive and the new iBTC incentive have provided very valuable data on the impact of yield for holding inverse positions. This is critical for determining how we handle iSynths once futures are launched and whether we continue to support them, something the community will need to debate over the coming week as the launch of futures approaches.