Voting Overview

Mezo’s governance model is simple: lock your commitment, earn the right to direct the protocol’s future. Through voting, veBTC holders capture the economic value of fees and determine where the chain’s value is allocated.

How Voting Works

When you lock BTC, you receive voting power tokenized as an NFT. Each week (epoch), you may allocate that power across different gauges—pools like BTC/MUSD, the MUSD Savings Rate, or other protocol functions. The gauges you vote for receive a proportional share of total mats emissions for that epoch.

More emissions attract more liquidity providers. More liquidity can increase trading volume, which can increase fees. Those fees flow back to you—the voter—creating a positive feedback loop where your influence grows in tandem with protocol success.

What You Earn

Trading Fees: 100% of fees generated by pools you vote for, distributed proportionally. If you allocated 1% of a gauge’s votes and that pool generated $50,000 in fees, you earn$ 500.

Incentives: External protocols deposit incentives to attract votes toward their preferred gauges. These are split among all voters on that gauge, creating a secondary revenue stream.

Passive Bridging Fees: All veBTC holders receive bridging and chain fees proportional to their boosted weight—no voting required.

This creates a market for votes. Protocols compete to attract your voting power, and you capture the value of that competition.

Voting Power and Boost

Your effective voting power depends on two factors: your base veBTC weight and any boost from veMEZO.

Base Weight (veBTC Only)

Without any veMEZO, your voting power equals your veBTC weight, which decays linearly as your lock approaches expiration. Lock 1 BTC for 28 days, and your initial power is 1.0, decaying continuously until it reaches zero at expiration.

Boosted Weight (veBTC + veMEZO)

When veMEZO votes are directed to your veBTC position, your voting power is multiplied by a boost factor between 1x and 5x. The boost depends on:

Your share of total veBTC in the system
The share of total veMEZO directed to your position

Key points:

Larger BTC positions require proportionally more veMEZO to reach max boost
You can receive boost by holding veMEZO yourself, or by attracting veMEZO votes through incentives
Boost must be “poked” to take effect after changes

To maintain your voting power, extend your lock periodically. See Managing Locks for details.

The Weekly Epoch

Mezo operates in 7-day epochs starting Thursday at 00:00 UTC. Each epoch is a fresh cycle for voting power, fees, and incentives.

The cycle:

Epoch begins
You cast votes throughout the week
Epoch ends and votes are tallied
Mats emissions distributed to gauges based on votes
Fees and incentives become claimable
Repeat

Critical: Votes don’t carry over. If you don’t vote in a given epoch, you forfeit your share of fees and incentives for that week.

Epoch Alignment

Lock durations are aligned to epoch boundaries and rounded down to the nearest full week. This means:

A 28-day max lock created mid-epoch will have an effective duration of approximately 21–28 days, depending on when you lock
Locks always expire at epoch transitions (Thursday 00:00 UTC)

This ensures voting weight calculations remain consistent across the system.

Two Ways to Participate with veMEZO

As a veBTC Holder Seeking Boost

If you hold veBTC and want to maximize your voting power:

Self-boost: Lock MEZO into veMEZO and direct it to your own veBTC position
Attract boost: Post incentives on your veBTC’s boost gauge to attract veMEZO votes from others

Either approach can increase your effective voting power up to 5x.

As a veMEZO Holder Seeking Yield

If you hold veMEZO and want to earn yield:

Browse veBTC boost gauges to find those with attractive incentives
Vote on those gauges to earn the posted incentives
Claim incentives at epoch end

Note: veMEZO holders do not receive a share of the trading fees, MUSD revenues, or bridging fees that veBTC positions earn. They only receive incentives posted on boost gauges.

Choosing Where to Vote

Different gauges offer different opportunities. Some factors you may consider when allocating votes:

Trading volume and fee generation
Incentives posted by protocols
Total votes already allocated to a gauge
Your own priorities for the Mezo ecosystem

For veMEZO holders voting on boost gauges:

Incentive amounts posted by veBTC holders
Duration and reliability of incentive postings
Alignment with your own veBTC positions (if any)

Monitor gauge weights, fee generation, and incentive markets each epoch to inform your decisions.

Next Steps

Ready to start voting? See How to Vote for the complete walkthrough.

Want to boost your position? See Boost Mechanism and Matching Market for details.