Azu believes that merely discussing the valuation, liquidity, and narrative of BANK is not enough. What truly needs to be laid out is: if you seriously hold a so-called 'coordinated asset,' what can you actually manage, change, or prevent? If BANK is merely a tool for fluctuations, then this article doesn’t need to be written; however, based on the positioning given by the authorities and major exchanges, BANK has clearly been defined as Lorenzo's governance and functional token, which transforms into veBANK after staking, used to participate in key decision-making, profit distribution, and ecological fund utilization. This means that the story of BANK holders should start with a 'list of rights,' rather than a 'K-line story.'
I will start with the most straightforward and easily overlooked right: the fee rates. Lorenzo is not just a single staking pool, but a complete set of BTC yield pipelines and structured product portfolios: stBTC brings out Babylon's native staking yield, LPT/YAT separates principal and interest, enzoBTC is responsible for standardized multi-chain cash forms, Vault and OTF package strategies into one-click purchasable combinations. Each of these products corresponds to different 'charging points'—management fees, performance bonuses, transaction fees, exit fees, and even cross-chain fees. A mature governance system will eventually adjust these rates to a state of 'covering costs without excessively compressing user yields.' For veBANK holders, future votes on 'which product lines' fees should be increased, which incentives should be cooled down, and what proportion of protocol revenue should flow back to the treasury or be used for buybacks' are essentially you deciding 'who this BTCFi machine serves.'
The second right is the power of life and death and ranking over the strategy lines themselves. Lorenzo aims to create a BTC version of an asset management operating system, and the strategy vault and OTF are the 'menu' of this machine. Which strategies can be listed on the menu? Which strategies are only suitable for professional players and not for the general public? Which strategies have shown black swan risks in backtesting and live trading over a period and should have their weights reduced or even be delisted? These should not only be decided by the team’s whims, but should gradually become a decision-making process within the governance framework that has 'indicators, thresholds, and exit mechanisms.' It has been repeatedly emphasized in public information that BANK/veBANK is used for protocol governance and incentive distribution, and has voting rights over product changes and ecological funding directions. I can reasonably expect that in the future, the so-called 'which strategy line is officially prioritized, and which is just a testing field' will increasingly be influenced by the voting weight of BANK holders.
The third right is the whitelist rights, which may seem abstract to many, but for BTCFi, it is almost a matter of life and death. Once you bring out the native staking yield of BTC, you will definitely encounter a bunch of counterparties: AVS, market-making bots, external lending protocols, structured product issuers, cross-chain stacks... Who is qualified to access assets like stBTC, LPT, YAT, enzoBTC with 'security mindset' cannot have no threshold. A reasonable approach is to write into the governance process whether 'certain types of counterparties can enter the whitelist, whether exposure should be restricted, and whether they should automatically downgrade or even be kicked out during anomalies,' rather than quietly making decisions in the background. A part of the rights of BANK holders should be to say 'yes' or 'no' to these whitelists and exposure limits. Otherwise, 'verifiable yields' will only remain at the bottom level, and when it reaches the upper strategy and counterparties, it will turn into 'as long as you trust, it's fine,' and the institutional value of the entire BTCFi will be discounted.
The fourth right is the roadmap for ecological incentive direction. Both the official and multiple platforms have mentioned that a considerable proportion of BANK distribution consists of rewards, ecology and development, liquidity, listing, and marketing, accounting for a significant share of the total 210 million, and the complete vesting period extends to 60 months, with the first 12 months of team, investors, advisors, and treasury not unlocking, which means that these chips will largely need to be decided by the DAO. Whether this money is used to pump mining for short-term TVL or to subsidize high-quality strategy providers, interconnected infrastructure, and institutional-level scenarios is a completely different fate. If BANK holders only care about 'whether there are activities in the short term,' it will ultimately force the protocol to spend these chips in the most stimulating but not necessarily healthiest areas; conversely, if more people in governance voting choose to 'invest money in interest rate curves, product standards, and risk control infrastructure,' then BANK itself will have more opportunities to be seen by the market as 'asset management platform stock' rather than 'mining candy.'
The fifth right is the braking power of parameter tuning. This part sounds technical, but it is actually the part that retail investors should care about the most: leverage limits, staking/re-staking limits, maximum exposure per strategy, maximum rewards for single trading pairs, and risk weights for different AVS or external protocols... The ranges of these parameters and how they respond to extreme market conditions determine whether you encounter 'the system helps you brake' or 'the system helps you accelerate into the wall' when a black swan arrives. Now, various interpretations have already described BANK as the 'on-chain bank stock' of the BTCFi world, which essentially means: what you hold is a long-term ticket to a financial system, not a casino chip. So what is the most important thing in a financial system? It’s not the high profits, but who has the right to pull the switch when it collapses. If parameter tuning does not have the checks and balances of veBANK and relies solely on team luck, any beautiful TVL and APR are just paper tigers.
At this point, I want to clarify the rule changes in this article: in Lorenzo's design, BANK is no longer just a 'reward,' but a ticket that upgrades you from a 'pure user' to a 'co-designer.' In the next stage of BTCFi, fewer and fewer people will be satisfied with 'I passively accept the interest rate given by a protocol,' and more and more will ask 'how this interest rate curve is shaped by voting, parameter adjustments, and risk control.' If Lorenzo truly wants to survive in the long term, he must ensure that the rights list of BANK holders transforms from a written commitment into actual constraints felt in extreme market conditions and major decisions.
For those of you who have already read the first twenty or so articles, the most realistic user impact is to learn to break down 'holding BANK' into two layers of psychological expectations. One layer is the price layer: you know this thing has depth and volatility across multiple platforms like Binance and MEXC, you understand the circulation and unlocking structure, and you know that short-term chip games are inevitable. The other layer is the rights layer: you are aware that you have the opportunity to influence certain handles that truly affect system security and yield distribution through veBANK, rather than just watching the spectacle from the sidelines.
Finally, here’s a very specific action suggestion, which Azhu directly explains in a continuous sentence without breaking it down. If you already hold BANK, the next step is not to rush to increase your position, but first confirm the governance page and documents of the protocol, and see what voting items are listed, placing keywords like 'product upgrades, fee structures, incentive distributions, whitelist adjustments, parameter modifications' in your mind; then seriously think about whether you are willing to lock part of your BANK into veBANK in exchange for longer-term voting rights and potential yield increases, if so, treat the locking period and position ratio as your 'time bet' on this machine for the next five years; finally, during each extreme fluctuation or major proposal, think clearly about which side you stand on—whether you hope the protocol will be conservative with parameters and whitelists or be more aggressive—and then use your votes to express your stance, rather than just venting in the secondary market with chasing up and down.
When more and more BANK holders begin to think according to the 'rights list' rather than just 'market screenshots,' the long-term story that Lorenzo wants to tell about BTCFi will truly have a chance to emerge.
