LUTE Tokenomics
The two tokens
LUTE
The liquid ERC-20 emission & governance token (18 decimals).
Earn it as an LP, or buy it.
veLUTE
Vote-escrowed LUTE: a non-transferable NFT (veNFT) representing a lock. Holds voting power and earns fees/bribes.
Lock LUTE for it.
You can't vote or earn fees with plain LUTE; you have to lock it into veLUTE first. That's the mechanism that ties long-term alignment to governance and cash flow.
Supply & allocation
Total initial supply: 500,000,000 LUTE — fixed. Minted once when the token was deployed, and that's what the allocation table below divides up.
Nobody can mint LUTE at will. The token's mint() function is owner-only, and that ownership belongs to the Minter contract — not to the team, not to a multisig. There is no admin key that can print LUTE, and no way to top up an allocation after the fact.
Total supply is not capped at 500M — it grows with emissions. The one and only source of new LUTE is the weekly emission the Minter mints on its published schedule. Nothing else adds supply, ever.
Total initial supply
500,000,000 LUTE — fixed, minted at deployment (allocated below)
Ongoing issuance
The weekly emission, and nothing else
Who can mint it
Only the Minter contract, only once per epoch, only the scheduled amount
Where it goes
95% to liquidity providers; 5% to the team, which locks it (see below)
Community / airdrop
50%
250,000,000
The community owns half the initial supply — the initial airdrop, plus future airdrops and incentives for the community.
Treasury / ecosystem
25%
125,000,000
Grants, incentives, partnerships and long‑term growth. Locked (see below).
Team
15%
75,000,000
Core contributors. Tokens locked.
Investors
5%
25,000,000
Early backers, on a vesting schedule.
Liquidity / other
5%
25,000,000
Initial DEX/CEX liquidity and market operations.
Half the initial supply goes straight to the community. Team and investors together hold just 20%, both vesting over time.
Where each weekly emission goes
The Minter splits every weekly mint two ways:
95% to liquidity providers — routed through the Voter to the gauges of the pools that won votes that epoch.
5% to the team — the
teamRate, which the contract hard-caps at 5%. It can be lowered but never raised above that.
The team locks its 5%, and will keep locking it. Every LUTE the team receives from emissions goes straight into its permanent veLUTE lock instead of being sold — so the team's share of emissions never reaches circulating supply, and never becomes sell pressure. The lock is permanent, not time-limited: that LUTE is not coming back out.
What the team actually spends is the income that lock earns — the trading fees and bribes it collects for voting, the same cash flow any other locker gets. That funds promoting the protocol: growth, incentives, partnerships, listings and community programmes. The principal stays locked and voting; only the yield is put to work.
So of the weekly emission, 95% goes to LPs and the remaining 5% is locked away rather than circulated.
Locked treasury.
Two commitments make LUTE self‑reinforcing and keep the protocol aligned with its lockers:
The treasury & ecosystem funds are locked. The 25% treasury/ecosystem allocation is locked into veLUTE rather than held liquid — it can't be dumped on the market, and it votes and earns fees alongside the community. Ecosystem spending is deliberate and long‑term, not a supply overhang.
The team locks its emissions. The 5% of each weekly mint that goes to the team is added to its permanent veLUTE lock rather than sold, so the team's emissions never become circulating supply. The team funds its work from the fees and bribes that lock earns, not from selling the principal.
The net effect is that both the treasury and the team's emissions sit locked and voting rather than circulating — value accrues to committed lockers, and the share of supply that is actually liquid grows far more slowly than the headline emission rate suggests.
What LUTE is for
Emissions: LUTE is the reward paid to liquidity providers each epoch.
Locking: lock LUTE to mint veLUTE and join governance.
The sink: because locking is where the fees and bribes are, LUTE continuously flows out of circulation and into locks. A high lock rate is the point, not a side effect.
What veLUTE gives you
Locking LUTE into veLUTE grants three things, all proportional to your locked amount:
Voting power to direct emissions each epoch.
100% of the trading fees from the pools you vote for.
Bribes / voting incentives paid by protocols to attract your vote.
The longer you lock, the more veLUTE you receive per LUTE, and a permanent lock holds maximum power indefinitely. See Locking LUTE.
Supply & flow
LUTE started at 500,000,000 (the allocation above) and grows only by the weekly emission. Over time, two forces pull in different directions:
Emissions add new LUTE each epoch and distribute it to liquidity providers, on the ramp-then-decay schedule (see Emissions & Epochs). This is the only thing that increases supply.
Locking removes LUTE from circulation for the duration of each lock.
So while total supply rises with emissions, circulating supply is pushed the other way by locking. The net effect the model aims for: emissions rent the liquidity, fees reward the lockers, and a growing share of LUTE sits locked and voting rather than circulating.
Live supply, locked amount, and weekly emissions are all shown live in the app's Overview dashboard.
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