Earning and Managing Your Position

Understanding Voting Power

When you lock BTC, your voting power is tokenized as an NFT. This NFT represents your governance weight and entitles you to:

A proportional share of trading fees generated by the gauges you vote for
A proportional share of incentives deposited for those gauges
Passive bridging and chain fees (proportional to your boosted weight)
The ability to vote on where new mats emissions are directed

Base Weight vs. Boosted Weight

Base weight: Your veBTC weight without any veMEZO boost. Operates at a 1x multiplier.

Boosted weight: When veMEZO votes are directed to your veBTC position, your effective weight is multiplied by up to 5x.

The boost depends on your share of total veBTC and the share of total veMEZO directed to your position. Larger BTC positions require proportionally more veMEZO to reach maximum boost.

Decay Mechanics

Your voting power decays linearly over time. If you lock 1 BTC for 28 days, your weight starts at 1.0 but decreases continuously until it reaches zero at expiration. You can extend your lock at any time to maintain maximum influence.

Earning as a veBTC Voter

You earn from multiple sources when you hold veBTC and vote:

Trading Fees

Source: 100% of the trading fees generated by the specific pool you voted for
Distribution: You receive a proportional share based on your voting weight. If a pool generates 10,000 USD in fees and you provided 5% of the votes on that gauge, you earn 500 USD.
Claimable: Paid out in the tokens of the pool (e.g., BTC and MUSD)

Incentives

Source: External incentives deposited by protocols to attract votes to their gauges
Distribution: Like fees, incentives are split proportionally among all voters on that gauge
Claimable: Paid out in the token deposited by the protocol

Passive Bridging Fees

Source: Fees from bridging assets onto Mezo and general chain activity
Distribution: All veBTC holders receive a share proportional to their boosted weight
Claimable: No voting required—you earn these simply by holding veBTC

This creates a market cycle: You direct mats emissions to pools, creating deeper liquidity. Deeper liquidity attracts volume and fees. You then capture your share of those fees.

Earning as a veMEZO Holder

veMEZO holders earn differently from veBTC holders:

Boost Gauge Incentives

Source: Incentives posted by veBTC holders on their boost gauges
How: Direct your veMEZO votes to boost gauges with attractive incentives
Claimable: At epoch end, proportional to your share of veMEZO votes on that gauge

Rebase Distributions

Source: A portion of weekly MEZO emissions
How: Automatically accrues to veMEZO holders based on the lock ratio
Purpose: Protects against dilution—when fewer people lock, rebases are higher

Important: veMEZO holders do not receive trading fees, MUSD revenue, or bridging fees. Those go to veBTC holders. veMEZO earns through boost incentives and rebases.

Managing Your Position

The Weekly Epoch

Mezo operates in 7-day epochs starting Thursday at 00:00 UTC. Votes do not persist—you must return every epoch to re-cast your vote. If you do not vote in a given week, you forfeit your share of fees and incentives for that period.

Claiming Rewards

Fees and incentives accrue to your position as the epoch progresses. However, they only become claimable once the epoch ends.

Navigate to your dashboard
Click Claim All
Your earned fees and incentives are sent to your wallet

For veMEZO holders, rebase distributions are claimed separately and will be added to your veMEZO position (increasing your veMEZO weight).

Extending Locks

To maintain your influence on rewards distribution, monitor your lock duration. As your lock decays, your voting power diminishes.

For veBTC: Select Extend Lock on your NFT to restore full weight.

For veMEZO: Extend your lock to maintain your boost-providing power and rebase earnings.

See Managing Locks and Collecting Rewards for more information.

Poke Vote

Poke refreshes your lock’s voting power to reflect its current state. If you’ve already voted in the current epoch, your votes won’t automatically update when your voting power changes. Poking ensures your votes are counted with your latest voting power.

When does voting power change?

Adding more BTC to your lock
Extending your lock duration
Claiming veMEZO rebase distributions (updates your veBTC boost)
Receiving more veMEZO votes pointed at your veBTC position
Directing your own veMEZO to your veBTC position
Natural decay as your lock approaches expiration

When should you poke?

For veBTC holders:

After increasing your BTC lock amount
After extending your lock duration
When your veMEZO situation changes (new votes received, rebase claimed, etc.)

For veMEZO holders:

After claiming rebase distributions
After extending your lock duration

Permanently locked positions maintain stable voting power and don’t require poking unless veMEZO-related changes occur.

Note: Poke is permissionless—anyone can poke any lock. Others may poke your position if your voting power has decayed significantly.

Strategies for Maximizing Returns

For BTC-Heavy Users

Lock BTC for maximum duration (28 days) and keep extending
Vote consistently each epoch on high-fee gauges
Consider acquiring MEZO to self-boost, or post incentives to attract veMEZO votes
Poke after any boost changes

For MEZO-Heavy Users

Lock MEZO for longer durations (up to 4 years) to maximize veMEZO weight
Survey boost gauges to find the best incentive yields
Diversify across multiple boost gauges to reduce risk
Consider pairing with a veBTC position to access trading fees directly

For Users Holding Both

Self-boost your veBTC with your veMEZO for maximum voting power
Vote on high-fee gauges to maximize fee earnings
Poke after any changes to maintain optimal boost
Claim rebases regularly to grow your veMEZO position