There are some Convex FRAX that had been getting very small incentives from FRAX (who was bribing through Votium), like FRAX/FXB_20261231 or FRAX/crvUSD. However, that’s not the case anymore, now they get absolutely nothing. Why is that?
These are products where users are locked for up to 3 years. Why don’t you just let people unlock their positions and leave? These are terrible products that are just causing users to hate FRAX and provide nothing to FRAX, as those pools have no trading volume.
Thanks for raising this. Incentives on those older pools were always discretionary and tied to specific periods when Frax wanted that liquidity. They were never guaranteed long-term, and anyone choosing to lock understood that rewards could change at any time.
Some unlock mechanisms technically exist in certain Curve/Convex/Frax setups, but using them here wouldn’t be reasonable. LPs who locked earlier already enjoyed the multiplier and higher reward share during the period when incentives were active. Retroactively unlocking after benefiting from that boosted period would break the logic of how these systems work and undermine fairness for everyone else who participated under the same rules.
Today the protocol’s priorities have shifted to frxUSD, Fraxtal, and liquidity venues that matter for the current roadmap. The pools you mentioned have very low volume and no strategic role anymore, so continuing incentives—or unwinding locks after the fact—wouldn’t be fair or productive for the broader ecosystem.
This isn’t about punishing anyone; it’s simply aligning incentives with where Frax is actually growing and delivering value now.
Thanks for the response and for explaining your perspective. I fully understand that:
Incentives were always discretionary.
The contracts never guaranteed any fixed stream of CRV, CVX or FXS over the full lock period.
The lock mechanics are clear at the smart contract level.
The problem is how this has played out in practice for a specific group of Convex FRAX products.
When some of us locked for 3 years in these vaults, the obvious expectation was:
Frax wanted that liquidity for a long time.
As long as the protocol wanted that liquidity, incentives would stay at a reasonable level, roughly comparable to other Convex Curve products.
What actually happened was very different:
During the first few months, we earned somewhat higher FXS because of the time multiplier.
After that, incentives on these vaults dropped sharply and have remained extremely low for years.
Over the whole period, we have earned far less than if we had stayed in other Convex Curve products.
So, yes, there was a slightly boosted period at the start, but it was followed by a very long tail with almost no rewards, while being fully locked and unable to reallocate. Given how these products were presented and incentivized at the time, it is hard not to feel that we were misled about the long term intention to support them.
This is why the “you already enjoyed the multiplier, so unlocking would be unfair” argument does not really match what has happened. The short boosted phase does not compensate for multiple years of being forced to stay in dead products with almost zero yield and no option to move to other venues.
At the same time, Frax itself has clearly pivoted:
Legacy FRAX and the current FXB that redeem to FRAX are no longer at the center of the roadmap. The focus is now frxUSD, sfrxUSD, Fraxtal and Fraxlend.
The Convex FRAX vaults in question have no CRV emissions on the underlying Curve gauges, no FXS incentives coming from Frax, and almost no trading volume.
For these specific vaults the situation today is:
Users are locked for up to 3 years.
The vaults earn essentially nothing.
The liquidity does not help Frax in any meaningful way.
So we end up in a lose-lose situation. Users are stuck in dead products, and Frax cannot benefit from that capital in the new products that the protocol actually wants to promote.
I am not asking to unlock everything. Many Convex FRAX and FRAXBP vaults still have large TVL and external bribes from partner protocols. Those clearly belong to an active strategy and are a different discussion.
What I am asking is narrower and based on objective criteria.
Define a small set of legacy Convex FRAX vaults with all of the following properties:
The underlying Curve LP currently receives no CRV emissions.
The vault has had zero FXS incentives coming from Frax for a long period.
The paired protocol is not bribing for that gauge.
The current TVL is modest, for example between 100 000 and 1 000 000 dollars, so these are not the largest strategic pools.
Based on current data, this set would be exactly:
FRAX/FXB20261231
FRAX/crvUSD
eUSD/FRAXBP
OHM/FRAXBP
I am explicitly not asking to touch the big FRAXBP metapools that still have substantial TVL and regular partner bribes.
For these legacy Convex FRAX vaults I request a simple outcome:
The reasoning is:
Users have already paid a very high price in opportunity cost by sitting for years in products that earn almost nothing.
The vaults do not provide real benefit to Frax anymore.
Keeping users trapped there only creates frustration and makes it much harder to trust any future long term lock that Frax might promote.
This is not just asking for a favor. Unwinding these clearly abandoned products in a fair way would also help Frax:
It would free capital that can move into frxUSD, Fraxtal and other places that actually matter now.
It would show that when the protocol pivots away from a product and stops incentivizing it in practice, it is willing to treat long term lockers reasonably instead of leaving them stuck for years with no meaningful rewards.
If governance believes that there should never be an exit even in such cases, it would be useful to say so clearly. That would mean that in Frax a 3 year lock is effectively one sided: incentives can be reduced to near zero for years while users stay locked with no way out, even when the product is obviously obsolete.
Personally, I think Frax is better served by doing the opposite here and allowing an exit without penalty for this small group of legacy Convex FRAX vaults.
Thanks for the follow-up. I want to clarify a few points because the way these pools are being grouped together isn’t accurate.
FRAXBP-aligned pools (eUSD/FRAXBP and OHM/FRAXBP)
These are not abandoned or forgotten products.
They are coordinated, partner-driven pools where Frax has maintained the exact same strategy from day one:
If a pool went to zero or near-zero incentives, it is because the paired protocol stopped bribing or supporting their side, not because Frax pivoted away from them.
If people feel abandoned in those vaults, the correct question is for eUSD and OHM teams, because we have not changed our policy toward FRAXBP or its meta-pools.
FXB pool (FRAX/FXB20261231)
FXB-20261231 was heavily incentivized for nearly a full year, longer than almost any comparable duration-based pool.
It has only been couple of months since incentives move to Fraxtal instead.
So the narrative that this pool has been “dead for years” does not match the actual timeline.
FRAX/crvUSD
This pool was never advertised or positioned as a long-term strategic pool.
It was always an opportunistic liquidity venue with no guarantee of multi-year incentives.
I understand the frustration when a lock coincides with incentives fading, but the idea that these pools were left for “years” with no signals or support is simply not accurate. The history of each one is quite different, and the reasons incentives changed are different as well.
The governance-level question about whether a structured exit should exist is valid — but it needs to be based on correct facts, not the assumption that Frax abandoned long-term commitments.
If you want to explore a governance path for a structured exit on a subset of clearly low-value legacy positions, you can outline a proposal and go for voting, of course.
Thanks for the detailed reply, that helps clarify how you are framing these pools.
You are right that their histories are not identical, and I am happy to correct my wording there. What I am trying to highlight is the situation of users who chose the 3 year lock: we had a hard 3 year commitment, a relatively short period with meaningful rewards at the beginning, and then a long remaining lock with very low or almost no effective yield, with no way to redeploy into the new Frax products that are actually strategic today.
On the FRAXBP meta pools like eUSD/FRAXBP and OHM/FRAXBP, I understand that Frax applies an algorithmic policy based on TVL and a minimum Convex or Votium threshold, and that on paper this has not changed. In practice, for eUSD/FRAXBP this has meant that no CRV from Frax directed Votium bribes has been reaching the pool for a long time because the emissions per round have not cleared the 0.05 percent minimum required by Votium. If the policy is to keep supporting FRAXBP metapools, a more effective approach would be to concentrate incentives into fewer rounds with larger amounts so that the threshold is actually reached and the liquidity pool receives something, instead of staying below the cut and having no effect at all. On the partner side, when I asked about this pool in the Reserve Protocol Discord back in May 2024, the answer was essentially that they did not plan to add incentives either. That was around 1.5 years ago, and nothing has changed since then, so the opportunity cost of being locked in this kind of position has been enormous.
For FXB, I do not dispute that FXB 20261231 was incentivized for a significant period before emissions moved to other venues. The problem is more basic: if liquidity is only going to be strongly supported for a limited time, exposing a 3 year lock option on that vault creates a very strong asymmetry. Many users are not following every internal discussion or timeline and will reasonably read “3 year lock plus strong incentives now” as something that is meant to be sustainable for a large part of that horizon, not as “we may cut this to near zero well before the 3 years and you will have no way out”. This has been exactly my experience across all the Convex FRAX vaults where I am locked: some returns at the beginning followed by a very large opportunity cost for the remaining lock period.
For FRAX/crvUSD, saying that it was never a long term strategic pool does not really address the same issue. If the intention is opportunistic and short term, offering a 3 year lock sends a very different signal to less informed users who simply see the lock option and the initial rewards and assume that the setup is meant to last for a while.
I agree with you that any governance level discussion about structured exits should be based on correct facts. For me the core pattern that matters is that there exist Convex FRAX vaults with a 3 year lock option whose pools now have almost no CRV, no effective incentives from Frax or from the partner, and very low volume, and whose liquidity is not materially contributing to the current frxUSD centered strategy. In those cases, regardless of how we split responsibility between Frax and the partner, the original economic logic of the lock has broken down for the locker.
So the concrete questions I would like to clarify are:
Do you think it is acceptable that 3 year locks remain in place on pools that currently have almost no incentives and no real strategic role for either Frax or the partner protocol?
If not, under what conditions would you consider some form of structured exit for those positions to be reasonable?
Having your view on these points would help a lot before trying to formalize anything at the governance level.
Quick follow up from my side, staying strictly on the substance.
I have been using Frax products for more than two years and I have a very large exposure across Frax related positions and Convex FRAX vaults. In particular I am locked for 3 years in this FRAX/crvUSD Convex FRAX vault, which currently has no incentives, almost no volume and no clear strategic role, while the successor pool frxUSD/crvUSD is supported instead.
For veFRAX voters, the core question is simple: should users remain locked for years in a vault with zero incentives and no strategic value, while liquidity is needed in its successor pool, or is there any willingness to design a migration or other solution for FRAX/crvUSD lockers?
Having a clear answer to this is important for how future long term locks will be perceived.
Hey @Mockingbird , So we believe users who chose a three-year lock took a leveraged bet on emissions and pool relevance. That decision is binding. Governance is not obligated to unwind individual risk when market structure evolves.
The shift from FRAX/crvUSD to frxUSD/crvUSD was intentional and publicly signaled. A long lock always carries the possibility that the underlying pool loses strategic value. That is part of the design.
The liquidity in FRAX/crvUSD is not useless. It still provides on-chain liquidity for LFRAX, and that function remains intact. What it no longer does is justify emissions or priority over the frxUSD route.
So the answer is: no, users do not get to break their own lock for free because conditions changed. A migration option can exist only if it preserves system strategy, not as a relief valve for individual positions.
Thanks for the reply, Nader.
I fully understand that a long lock means taking risk on emissions and pool relevance. My point here is that this situation goes beyond the usual market risk.
I locked in the FRAX/crvUSD Convex FRAX vault for 3 years about 2 years ago, when FRAX was the only Frax stablecoin. There was no frxUSD yet, no public roadmap to make FRAX a “legacy” asset, and no communication that a new frxUSD/crvUSD pool would later become the strategic one.
Today FRAX/crvUSD has low TVL, almost no volume and zero incentives, while the protocol has pivoted to frxUSD and supports frxUSD/crvUSD instead. So when you say that the shift from FRAX/crvUSD to frxUSD/crvUSD was intentional and publicly signaled, that is only true after the fact. Users who locked for 3 years could not reasonably price in the specific risk that their stablecoin would be superseded and that their vault would be abandoned while a direct successor pool was launched and incentivised.
I am not asking governance to compensate market losses or guarantee emissions. I am asking to address a very narrow case: a small legacy vault, based on an asset that has been replaced, where keeping a few users hard locked does not meaningfully help the system.
From a user perspective, the real precedent here is not “governance must always unwind every lock”, but “if you lock 3 years with Frax, you may end up stuck for years in a deprecated product even after a new version is launched and supported”. That is what makes it very hard to trust future 3 year locks.