veNFTs · Where the new machinery meets the existing business

Locked votes, pooled floor, rewards you can sell forward

veNFTs are the convergence: the NFT structure's escrow, floats, and settlement — plus something apes never had: the position earns every epoch, and the servicing infrastructure already runs in production. Self-repaying loans meet the share float, on collateral this platform has valued and voted for years.

Why veNFTs aren't apes

Weight is objective — so the floor can be shared

commensurableA veNFT's substance is locked amount × remaining lock time — objective ve-units, no traits, no rarity debates. Every position on the platform reduces to the same unit, so bids don't need to target items: they quote per ve-unit, as a discount to the underlying's spot — exactly how the existing veNFT OTC market already prices, just formalized into a book.
no worst pieceThe ape book's structural adverse selection ("collection bids are quotes on the worst acceptable item") disappears — there is no worst piece when weight is the only variable.
decaying weightHonest wrinkle: ve-weight decays as locks age. A position's floor is weight × mark, live — it drifts down unless the lock is extended. The servicer can auto-max locks by policy (as managed positions often do), turning decay into a checkbox.
02 · The pooled floor

The highest bidder takes delivery.
The marginal bidder sets the mark.

One ladder covers every veNFT on the platform. A position's borrowing floor isn't the best bid — the best bid only covers part of the total weight. It's the clearing level: the price at which committed bids could absorb all platform ve-weight. Try it:

$0.70/ve
20k ve
$0.60/ve
30k ve
$0.50/ve
60k ve · THE MARK
Platform weight
100k ve
Top bid
$0.70
Clearing mark
$0.50
10k-ve position floor
$5.0k
2k-ve position floor
$1.0k
Bids: $0.70 for 20k ve, $0.60 for 30k, $0.50 for 60k. The top bid only covers a fifth of the platform â the clearing mark is $0.50, because that’s where committed depth absorbs all 100k ve. Floors price off the mark, not the headline.
Self-repayment returns

The escrow votes, earns, and pays its own debt

the yieldveNFTs earn every epoch — voting rewards and bribes. Escrowed positions keep earning, and the flow services the debt through the same rewards rails that run the platform's loans today. True skims, no bullet-loan workaround — apes needed one because they produce nothing; ve produces.
the servicerWhile escrowed, the platform votes the position — the managed-voting role 40Acres already operates in production, optimizing each epoch's rewards. The escrow isn't a vault; it's a working asset under management.
the powerAggregated escrowed ve makes the platform a meta-governor of the underlying DEX. Real influence — wielded under a disclosed voting policy, because that scale of power hidden is a liability and disclosed is a moat.
The epoch waterfall — every seat gets paid from the same stream. Each epoch's rewards split four ways:
1 · servicerthe platform's fee for the managed voting that generates the stream.
2 · bond coupona running coupon to the committed floor lender — the reward for being the paid bid. The bond isn't parked capital; it's a coupon-paying instrument from the day it fills.
3 · debt paydownthe self-repaying share — and every dollar of principal retired lifts the float's NAV dollar-for-dollar.
4 · dividendthe remainder to shareholders, pro-rata — real cash APR on the float, paid while the shares trade.
(Splits are risk-engine parameters, placeholders pending calibration.)
The rewards right

A right to the position's rewards, for a term

what a share isA share of the float is a right to the position's reward stream over the term, plus its slice of the settlement value at the end. The lock never unlocks. The votes keep voting. What trades is the fruit, never the tree.
not a liquid lockerThis is deliberately not a liquid-locker wrapper — no perpetual synthetic, no lock circumvention, no shadow token competing with the DEX's own. The right is term-bound and expires into reassembly; when the structure settles, the paper retires. ve protocols hate wrappers that hollow out the lock covenant — this one strengthens it: locks stay maxed (the servicer's auto-extend policy), voting power stays active under a disclosed policy, and the DEX's emissions keep flowing to committed weight.
equity w/ dividendBecause the escrow cash-flows, the float earns its slice of the epoch waterfall (section 03) — shares that pay real cash while they trade. The ape float was a pure call option; the ve float is a dividend stock with one.
what buyers getA share pays four ways at once: the epoch dividend (cash, pro-rata); automatic NAV accretion (every dollar of debt the waterfall retires lifts equity dollar-for-dollar); levered upside on the underlying (shares = (V−D)/supply — the ape math, on an asset that pays while you wait); and settlement & control rights (pro-rata at auction, the majority right past 50%, own-shares netting on any bid). Plus the meta-benefit: it's a term-bound claim you can exit any block — without anyone touching the lock.
who buys ≠ who lendsThe float and the bond are separate seats: when the borrower sells shares, the buyers are open-market participants — not the floor lender, who holds the senior bond (a different instrument, earning the coupon). The lender only ends up holding shares two ways: buying them like anyone else, or receiving them as standby dilution — and those are the shares they sell into the float. Three markets, three instruments: the floor book trades the bond, the share market trades the float, the escrow runs the waterfall that pays both.
resting share bidsConsistent doctrine, one storey up: unfilled bids on the share book earn nothing — they're what makes the float liquid, but only committed capital gets paid. Their reward is the fill: dividend-paying, self-accreting, levered paper bought at their own chosen price.
Governance, inherited verbatim

Every rule from the NFT structure carries over

debt freezeFrozen at fractionalization; principal raises pay shareholders pro-rata, never the borrower.
rolls refinanceOn the pooled book this is automatic: a roll re-originates against the standing ladder at the current mark — the departing lender's bucket repays from the new origination, no bilateral negotiation exists. No committed depth at the principal = the roll fails honestly into settlement.
majority rightRolls stand by default; >50% of the float may force settlement at any term boundary. Keep half to keep the wheel.
standbyUnresolved expiry with live equity → escrow persists and the bond is paid for waiting — in cash from the reward stream first, dilution only as fallback. Apes pay for patience in shares; ve pays in cash.
extension economicsA fully-cashed-out borrower exits the story; the structure carries on. None of these rules ever asked what was in escrow — so none of them change. See the NFT page for each in full.
Why this ships first

Not a new market — an upgrade of the existing book

live todayveNFT loans, managed voting, and rewards processing are the platform's current production business. This vertical doesn't bootstrap anything — it adds the committed floor, the share float, and cascade-proof settlement to loans that already exist.
needs no blessingEverything here is a permissionless on-chain right of the NFT holder — custody, voting, claiming, lock extension. The underlying DEX's opinion of this market is irrelevant to its operation: the collateral references their protocol; the market rails are ours, on Uniswap. And the term-bound rewards-right design leaves no lock-circumvention argument to campaign with.
known collateralYears of valuing, voting, and servicing this exact asset class — the operator moat applied to its home turf.
honest risksThe underlying token's volatility prices the ladder (same risk engine); lock decay needs the auto-extend policy; and the meta-governor position demands a published voting policy from day one.
The sentence for the deck: the first market where the collateral votes, earns, pays its own debt, sells its rewards forward for a term, and stands on a floor the whole platform shares.
Open parameters

The mechanism is done. These numbers aren't.

waterfall splitsThe epoch percentages — servicer fee, bond coupon, debt paydown, dividend — are risk-engine placeholders pending calibration.
dilution rateStandby's fallback carry (when rewards don't cover the coupon) needs its per-epoch rate priced.
auto-extendThe servicer's lock-extension defaults — how aggressively escrowed positions stay maxed.
rebase handlingve systems that rebase weight to lockers need the accrued weight routed through the same waterfall accounting.
Illustrative mechanism walkthrough — not audited economics, not an offer. Companion to the NFT, Pricing, Risk, and Yield pages.