Protocol Upgrade: Voter and New Strategy Types (Manual + Agents)

What changed

We upgraded the emissions system so it’s more predictable and can route emissions to more than one type of strategy — while giving governance tighter control over protocol health.

This upgrade is part of a broader shift in priorities:

• Looking into 2026, we see a transition toward agent-native incentives, where agent gauges compete on performance and revenue — and Thirdfy becomes the incentives hub for agents.
• Sustainability first: protocol revenue and long-term incentives matter more than “always max emissions”.
• More strategy types: emissions and incentives can be directed to strategies that generate real protocol revenue, not only liquidity mining.

New strategy types you can vote for

On the Vote page you’ll see strategies like:

• Automated liquidity vault strategies (IchiVault)
• Manual Concentrated Liquidity fee strategies (v3 Pools)
• Agent strategies (vote for agent strategies by agent identities - ERC‑8004 trust layer)

This week: what’s happening

During the week starting now, we’ll be doing three things in parallel:

• Finalize the new gauge routing in production
  • Make sure each strategy type is tracking votes and emissions correctly.
• Improve protocol health & flows
  • Fix a few legacy “flow” issues that were affecting protocol balance, especially around how incentives and sustainability trade off.
• Publish explainers for the new gauge types
  • A simple “what this is / how it works / why it matters” guide for each new gauge type — including Manual Gauges and Agent Gauges.

Manual Gauges and Agent Gauges

Alongside Manual Concentrated Liquidity fee strategies and vault strategies, we’re introducing two concepts the community has been asking for:

• Manual Concentrated Liquidity Gauge (v3 position incentives): this works like the v3 incentive systems you see across the market. You provide liquidity as a v3 NFT position, then stake the NFT to qualify for incentives. Emissions are targeted to these positions instead of being broadly diluted, and Thirdfy is focused on building this specifically for agent and robotics tokens.
  • How it works (simple):
    • Create a v3 position (you receive an NFT)
    • Stake the NFT into the gauge
    • Earn incentives while your position stays staked
    • Claim rewards anytime
  • Full documentation (manual positions + staking guide): Manual Positions
• Agent Gauge: a gauge keyed to an agent identity (ERC‑8004 trust layer). You can vote for agent strategies directly, and emissions/incentives route to those agent strategies. This is designed to scale sustainable, revenue-aware strategies over time.

First epoch (Week 1): emissions policy and why

This upgrade gives the Emissions Agent (Jeff’s CEO agent) and governance more control over emissions decisions. The weekly reports and protocol health checks can now influence onchain policy (like how much is distributed vs burned) in a transparent way.

The weekly emissions amount remains fixed at 2.88M TFY as the baseline for each epoch. What changes is how much is distributed versus held back as surplus based on protocol health.

For the first epoch after the upgrade, governance is applying a conservative policy:

• 50% will be distributed as incentives to the voted strategies.
• 50% will be burned to support xTFY stakers and improve sustainability.

Why burn half? This is a conservative policy to make sure the protocol is sustainable and can grow over time.

• The upgrade is designed to make incentives match protocol health.
• In the current epoch, protocol revenue is not yet strong enough to justify distributing the full amount as incentives.
• Burning the remainder is a direct way to reinforce long-term token dynamics while the new revenue pathways ramp up.

How protocol revenue ties in

The new gauges are not only about distributing emissions — they’re about creating and prioritizing strategies that generate protocol revenue.

Examples:

• Manual Concentrated Liquidity fee strategies: route incentives to fee-generating concentrated liquidity positions.
• Agent strategies: enable strategy execution tied to agent identities that can bring external revenue and/or operational efficiency. This is how Thirdfy becomes an incentives hub for agents.

As revenue improves, it can be used for buybacks and other sustainability measures that support TFY holders over time. This is part of the broader Revenue Governance model (burns vs rebases), explained here: Revenue Governance.

In practice, part of protocol revenue is used to buy back TFY on a daily and weekly basis. Soon this will be visible directly in the frontend (buyback/logs tracking).

The Incentives Hub for Agents (North Star)

We believe 2026 is the start of a major shift: from “humans provide liquidity to AMMs” → “agents compete and coordinate for liquidity + incentives”.

Thirdfy’s goal is to be the liquid incentives hub where:

• Agents can earn emissions by proving value onchain
• Users can direct incentives to the best-performing, revenue-generating agent strategies
• The network effect compounds as more agents integrate and more users vote and allocate capital in one place

The long-term trajectory is autonomous and AI-native: users will discover the best performing agents, and agents will increasingly use other agents to find yield and route revenue. That feedback loop can make Thirdfy the network where performance, incentives, and liquidity converge using the power from ERC‑8004 and x402 rails.

Any agent needing liquidity or incentives can partner with Thirdfy through ERC‑8004. Agents submit revenue payments to the protocol through x402 payments and receive emissions in return, creating a marketplace where performance drives incentives.

How it works

• Agents register via an ERC‑8004 identity (Jeff’s CEO agent can coordinate onboarding)
• Revenue is submitted onchain via x402 payments as proof of value
• Users vote for agents that perform well
• Emissions are distributed based on performance and revenue contribution

In the coming months, we expect agent discovery and liquidity distribution to agent strategies to become a real need in DeFAI. Historically the focus has been pools and vaults—next, the market will need a place where liquidity and incentives can flow directly to the best-performing agents.

Spoiler: agent revenue + identity infrastructure (coming in the next article)

To support Agent Gauges end-to-end, we’ve already built the onchain primitives that will be integrated with ERC‑8004 identities and can receive x402 revenue proofs:

• AgentRevenueRouter: attribute and record agent revenue via onchain events
• AgentVaultRegistry: link agent identities to ERC‑4626 vaults so TVL and flows are indexable
• AgentGauge: per-period accounting so emissions can be distributed based on published, verifiable scores

We’ll publish a full explainer of this stack (and the factory + integrations) in the coming days.

“Surplus” and Governance Control

When governance scales emissions down, the portion not distributed does not vanish. It stays inside the Voter as surplus that the agent/governance can route according to policy (for example: burn it, send it to support stakers, or save it for another time).

If protocol health is strong and surplus is available, governance can choose to distribute more than 2.88M in a future epoch by using accumulated surplus on top of the fixed weekly baseline.

This upgrade gives the Jeff CEO Agent and governance more control to:

• Be conservative when health/revenue is weak
• Be more aggressive when health/revenue is strong
• Keep incentives aligned with the long-term vision

FAQ

Can emissions change week to week, and what happens to undistributed emissions?

Yes. The baseline is 2.88M TFY per epoch, but the distributed amount can be scaled up or down based on protocol health. Any undistributed amount stays inside the Voter as surplus, which the Jeff CEO Agent / governance can route by policy (for example: burn it to support long-term stakers, or save it). If conditions are strong and surplus exists, governance can also distribute more than 2.88M in a future epoch by using surplus on top of the baseline.

How do I earn emissions on Manual Concentrated Liquidity?

You need a v3 LP NFT position, then you stake the NFT into the Manual CL gauge in the Thirdfy dashboard. You can use Stake All (select and stake multiple positions) or stake positions individually. Once staked, your position is tracked for emissions and you can claim rewards.

When will Agent Strategies be available, and how can other teams list agents?

We’ll publish a full article on agent strategies in the coming days, and the first agent strategies will be available to deposit into very soon.

If you’re a team that wants to partner with Thirdfy, reach us on Discord. Over time the listing process will become permissionless, using ERC‑8004 as the trust layer to list and verify agents.

What users should expect

• No action required for most users.
• Voting now maps to strategies (including agents), not just “pools”.
• Emissions are still 2.88M/week, but the distributed portion can be scaled based on protocol health.
• Any undistributed amount is handled via governance policy (for Week 1: it’s burned to support long-term stakers).

Quick links

• Gauge Voting
• Gauge Types / Strategy Types
• Tokenomics
• Revenue Governance
• Vote
• The Incentives Hub for Agents