Most veToken systems are cosmetic. People lock tokens, vote once or twice, collect boosts, and move on. The protocol keeps doing whatever it was already going to do. Lorenzo’s setup doesn’t work like that. veBANK actually decides where money goes, and that changes how people behave around it.
When you lock BANK, you’re not just signaling long-term belief. You’re choosing which strategies get oxygen. Vaults don’t grow because they sound good on Twitter. They grow because veBANK voters route emissions and attention toward them. If a strategy underperforms or stops making sense, votes drift away and capital follows.
The lock itself is straightforward. Longer lock, more weight. No tricks. If you unlock early, you lose the ve power instantly. That alone filters out people who just want to farm for a week. What’s left are holders who are willing to sit through drawdowns because they actually care which strategies survive.
Voting isn’t abstract either. You’re not voting on slogans or roadmaps. You’re voting on specific vaults and strategy types. Momentum models. Trend following. Structured yield. Quant setups. This is closer to deciding which trading desks get funded than traditional governance. That’s why turnout is high. Votes actually matter.
The bribe layer makes this more interesting. Vault managers and partner projects compete for votes by putting real money on the table. All of it goes directly to veBANK lockers for that epoch. No protocol cut. No hidden routing. If someone wants influence, they pay for it. That keeps things honest in a way soft incentives never do
What this creates is pressure on strategy quality. If a vault wants emissions, it has to convince voters it’s worth supporting. That usually means performance, not promises. Bad strategies don’t die immediately, but they slowly starve. Good ones attract votes without needing constant marketing.
There’s also a feedback loop with composed vaults. veBANK decisions don’t just affect emissions. They affect which building blocks become dominant across user portfolios. A strategy that wins votes ends up embedded deeper into the ecosystem. That’s a lot of responsibility for voters, and people treat it that way.
This isn’t risk-free. Long locks mean illiquidity. If the market turns ugly, unlocking hurts. Bribe wars can get noisy. Large players can still sway outcomes. The system is complex enough that bugs are a real concern. Anyone pretending otherwise is lying.
But compared to passive governance, this actually aligns incentives. You don’t lock BANK to feel involved. You lock it because your decision changes where millions of dollars move next.
That’s the difference. veBANK isn’t a badge. It’s control.
And once governance controls capital instead of just parameters, people stop treating it casually.
