veNOTE

fact Source contracts/src/governance/veNOTE.sol. veNOTE is a non-transferable voting-weight record in the Curve tradition: you lock NOTE for a fixed term and receive weight that falls linearly to zero at the unlock time. It implements IVotes in timestamp mode and is the IVotes source for both governors and for gauge votes.

The rule

Weight

amount × (end − t) / MAXTIME

MAXTIME

4 × 365 days

Minimum term

1 week

Delegation

none

• end is the unlock time you choose, floored to a week boundary (Thursday 00:00 UTC). A lock ending in 4 years from today has a weight of about 1 veNOTE per NOTE; a 1-year lock starts at about 0.25.
• Weight decays every second. Nothing decays your principal: the NOTE amount stays fixed and is returned in full by withdraw() once the lock expires.
• One lock per address. There is no delegation: delegates(a) returns a, and delegate or delegateBySig revert DelegationNotSupported.
• Weight is exact: balanceOfAt and totalSupplyAt use a binary search on checkpointed points, so a governor snapshot at any past timestamp reads the true value at that instant.

Decay curve

Illustrative. Weight in veNOTE (y) against time (x). Each lock is a straight line from amount × (end − now) / MAXTIME at creation to zero at its unlock time. Longer locks start higher and fall more slowly in relative terms.

Numeric example

illustrative Same locks as the worked weekly example.

	Alice	Bob
Locked	100,000 NOTE	60,000 NOTE
Term	4 years (max)	2 years
Slope amount / MAXTIME	100,000e18 / 126,144,000 ≈ 7.93e11 per second	60,000e18 / 126,144,000 ≈ 4.76e11 per second
Weight at lock	100,000 × 4/4 = 100,000 ve	60,000 × 2/4 = 30,000 ve
Weight after 1 week	100,000 − 7.93e11 × 604,800 / 1e18 ≈ 99,520 ve	30,000 − 4.76e11 × 604,800 / 1e18 ≈ 29,712 ve
Weight after 1 year	75,000 ve	15,000 ve
Weight at unlock	0	0
Share of total (130,000 at lock)	76.9%	23.1%

Bob’s lock loses 0.96% of its weight in the first week; Alice’s loses 0.48%. The shorter lock decays faster in relative terms, so relative weights drift toward longer lockers between votes unless Bob extends.

Functions

fact

Function	Who	Reverts
createLock(amount, unlockTime)	anyone, whenNotPaused	ZeroAmount, LockExists, UnlockTimeInPast, UnlockTimeTooFar (more than 4 years)
increaseAmount(amount)	the locker	NoLock, LockExpired
depositFor(account, amount)	anyone	adds NOTE to another address’s lock; NoLock, LockExpired
increaseUnlockTime(unlockTime)	the locker	UnlockTimeNotIncreased, UnlockTimeTooFar, LockExpired
lockFromStaked(shares, unlockTime)	anyone	pulls sNOTE shares and credits their convertToAssets value; unlockTime must be non-zero for a new lock and 0 for a top-up (UnlockTimeMustBeZero)
withdraw()	the locker, never pausable	NoLock, LockNotExpired; returns NOTE and any escrowed sNOTE shares. Succeeds even when the global history is more than 255 weeks behind (see below)
checkpoint()	anyone	fills the global point history; each call walks at most 255 weeks
balanceOf, balanceOfAt(account, ts), totalSupply, totalSupplyAt(ts)	view	FutureLookup for ts > now
getVotes, getPastVotes, getPastTotalSupply, clock, CLOCK_MODE	view (IVotes)	getPast* need timepoint < clock()
locked, lockedEnd, getLastUserSlope, userPointHistory, pointHistory, userPointEpoch, epoch	view

Every mutating call re-checkpoints the user and the global supply, so totalSupply is never stale by more than the caller’s own change. The global walk covers at most 255 weeks per call; if the contract has been idle for longer than that, a lock, top-up or unlock-time extension reverts CheckpointRequired(reachedTs) until checkpoint() has been called enough times to bring the history up to the current block, so a non-zero user change is never merged into a stale global point.

withdraw() of an expired lock is the exception: its account delta is zero (the lock’s slope was already removed through slopeChanges[end] when the lock expired), so merging it into a partially walked global point changes nothing. The call persists the partial walk exactly as checkpoint() would and returns the funds; a later checkpoint() finishes the history and the global point sequence is identical whichever order the two calls run in. Withdrawal is therefore available at any time, as the pause rules promise.

fact Recovery cost after a long idle period. The scenario needs about five years with no lock, deposit, withdrawal or checkpoint on the contract. Measured in the test suite: after a 52 week lock and a 300 week idle period, one permissionless checkpoint() call walks 255 weeks for about 8.1M gas, and the next user action walks the remaining 45 weeks. Each further 255 idle weeks cost one more such call. Funds are delayed by at most one transaction, never lost, and the app decodes CheckpointRequired by name.

Locking from sNOTE

lockFromStaked does not redeem the vault shares (sNOTE withdrawals need requestWithdraw plus a cooldown). It escrows the shares inside veNOTE and credits the lock with their asset value at that moment. Voting weight is fixed at lock time and does not track later vault yield, which is the conservative choice; the shares, including any yield accrued while escrowed, come back with withdraw().

What veNOTE is used for

Consumer	Reads	Note
NoteGovernor	getPastVotes(voter, snapshot), getPastTotalSupply	Snapshot is proposal creation plus votingDelay (1 day). Proposal threshold is 0.5% of supply at clock() − 1.
UpgradeGovernor	same	Quorum 8% of supply at snapshot.
GaugeController	getLastUserSlope, lockedEnd	Allocates your slope across gauges; the lock must extend past the next week boundary (LockExpiresTooSoon).

Limits and non-features

• No transfer, no wrapping, no delegation. Weight belongs to the address that locked.
• No early exit. withdraw() reverts LockNotExpired until end.
• Not a boost. sNOTE staking rewards are not multiplied by veNOTE in v1; bribe markets and lock boost are listed as future work in the contract documentation.
• Pausable creation only. The guardian can pause createLock, increaseAmount, depositFor, increaseUnlockTime and lockFromStaked; withdraw always works.