Reducing the Number of Pools Eligible for TINY Farming Rewards

[EricTinyman]

Background

Currently, the top 60 pools by vote each month are eligible to receive TINY farming rewards through our monthly voting process. While this has helped support a broad range of pools, we’ve observed a pattern where low-liquidity pools are created with the primary intent of farming votes, without meaningful liquidity or community support behind them.

This results in:

• Dilution of rewards across many low-impact pools

• Less capital efficiency in farming incentives

• Difficulty for genuine projects to compete for visibility and incentives

The Issue

This loophole is being used to farm rewards with minimal contribution to overall ecosystem liquidity or user value. While we appreciate experimentation and inclusion, it’s essential that farming rewards remain an incentive for impactful pools that drive ecosystem health.

Proposal

We are currently exploring a reduction from 60 to somewhere between 30 and 40 pools, but we are fully open to community feedback on the optimal number.

Reducing the number of pools would:

• Concentrate rewards into higher-quality pools

• Increase the incentive for meaningful liquidity provision

• Prevent spam or exploitative pool creation

Community Input

We’d love to hear your thoughts:

• Do you support reducing the number of eligible pools?

• What do you think is the optimal number: 30 or 40?

• Are there any unintended consequences we should be mindful of?

Let us know your thoughts below. If there’s consensus, we’ll move this toward a formal governance vote.

Thanks for helping shape a healthier Tinyman ecosystem!

The Tinyman Team

[bernalgo]

I do not at all support that. It will reduce the need to hold Tiny, since incentivizing your favorite pools is the main incentive for many holders, including myself. It would make voting essentially useless with the result a foregone conclusion. The $TINY token would drop in value since there would be no more need to lock tokens for 4 years to get your smaller pool over the finish line. The liquidity for memecoins and new projects would dry up, hurting innovation in the ecosystem and the ecosystem as a whole. Tinyman would lose market share to Pact, as long as it would be possible to incentivize small project pools there…the liquidity would migrate there out of necessity.
In summary I see this as a disastrous proposal for
the $Tiny token, but more importantly, for the ecosystem as a whole, which would get more sclerotic and concentrated in large tokens only.

[ROAM]

Hi,

“Do you support reducing the number of eligible pools?” - No. I don’t think that will solve the issue. There will still likely be those exploitative pools. After all, it is just matter of TINY voting power on hand.

I think solution is some requirements for tokens to be in voting list in a first place.
Requirements:
1.) TOKEN must have minimum of $10K LP against ALGO (TOKEN/ALGO LP) in Tinyman platform.
2.) Total TVL in Tinyman platform at least $25k.
3.) TOKEN must be at least 6 months old.

Those 3 parameters will prevent gaming and pump dump tokens to be included into list of boosted pairs pretty well.

For example someone can’t buy dead token from market and vote tiny boost into it without significantly buying it first. if malicious actor does so, it will offer old holders good exit opportunity and that malicious actor will lose funds. $10k TOKEN/ALGO requirement will prevent malicious actors for creating TOKEN_A & TOKEN_B and pooling just them together to fake TVL measures. $25k total TVL measure just third safeguard to prevent gaming in general because TVL requirement is bit higher, but allows tokens that have a lot of liquidity against other legit tokens like tALGO, still to be included. 6 month old token requirement will prevent pump dumps to be included, because those tokens will not benefit Tinyman or Algorand ecosystem in anyway.

That will also mean that if you have token like tALGO that is legit, but also malicious token called M_TOKEN. that M_TOKEN will be excluded from the tiny power voting completely, even if there was tALGO/M_TOKEN pool. so only legit pools where both tokens meet requirements can be voted.

These kind of requirements will not block boosting new pair for legit projects, like what happened with tALGO. tALGO got huge boost against goBTC even though tALGO/goBTC was pretty small pool before that. so those requirements will still allow legit projects to pair funds against new pairs, but will pretty well keep malicious actors out without sacrificing flexibility.

Regards,
ROAM

[MetaGrat]

As the creator of the BasketbAlgo (HOOP), I strongly oppose the proposal to reduce the number of eligible farming pools from 60 to 30–40. This move risks doing more damage to Tinyman’s ecosystem than the problem it aims to solve.

Let me explain how I utilize Tinyman Farming for BasketbAlgo and HOOP:

• Consistently in top 60 for last 4 cycles, ranked around 40–50.
• Project owns ~60% of LP tokens with rewards used productively:
  • 50% sent to voters + extra HOOP/ALGO LP tokens to incentivize holders to farm
  • 50% locked in Tinyman governance by the project, reinvested into Tinyman and our community.
• 15–20 unique voters per cycle, significantly above the average.
• $10K+ TVL and 30+ LP token holders — small, but real.

In my opinion this is how the farming system was meant to be used. To encourage people to farm and interact with Tinyman.
This proposal will backfire because:

1. Punishes real builders, not exploiters

• Legitimate small-to-mid projects will be cut off arbitrarily.
• Projects like mine would be wiped out of eligibility — despite community support and responsible tokenomics.

2. Kills $TINY Token Utility

• Locking TINY for voting is the main utility.
• With only 30–40 pools, the outcome is predictable, and most holders will stop locking altogether.
• TINY value and governance model will suffer.

3. Concentrates Power in Big Projects

• Company level-backed projects like will always win.
• New or indie projects will never stand a chance, even with strong ideas and fair launches.

4. Doesn’t Fix Whale Exploits

• A whale can still vote a dead LP to the top 30. The problem isn’t solved it is just hidden.

5. Kills Early Stage Projects

• Early access to farming is what helps projects bootstrap liquidity.
• Proposals like “6-month token age” kill momentum and eliminate real growth.

6. Breaks Trust

• When people asked about OPUL getting rewards, Tinyman has previously said: You can vote for any pool — if it gets votes, it gets rewards.
• Changing the system after people built strategies around it undermines confidence.
  What do I suggest:
  Don’t reduce pool count. Instead, apply smart filters before voting, such as:
• Minimum TVL, adjusted to Algorand’s liquidity reality (Even 10k USD a lot)
• Monthly volume activity, not just one-time liquidity injection
• LP token holder count, reflecting real community support

This means evaluating Value, Volume and Validity:
TVL + Activity + Holders — a much better way to protect the system.These filters should help preserving a fair farming while protecting against abuse.

This proposal is a textbook case of cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face. There are possible preventions and better solutions then reducing the eligible pool count. Please do not proceed with this proposal.

[bernalgo]

agreed. This proposal is unfortunately loaded with unintended negative consequences for Tinyman and the wider ecosystem.

[Tryvis]

I would be open to trying 40 LPs rather than 60, but also making eligibility more restrictive.

I think the most straightforward way of making sure reward LPs are contributing to the overall ecosystem would be to only offer rewards to LPs containing ALGO, tALGO, or TINY on one or both sides.

[Criticalthinking]

Tough call here. Putting up guardrails will feel like a misstep towards maintaining decentralization, and I am not sure would totally extinguish the issue. Reducing pools plus adding in eligibility requirements will certainly centralize power to more mature projects. Perhaps good, but with an already struggling ASA ecosystem new projects meeting eligibility requirements plus maintaining the investment towards TINY to bootstrap initial rewards will be challenging.

In my opinion, gamification will never stop. It will just change based on the current rule set. With that in mind I think it is more important for Tinyman to preserve decentralized branding while building more use cases for TINY to reduce consistent sell pressure. TINY is at ATLs which should make it easier than ever for new users to come in and be influential in voting.

-CT

[DonBaruda]

@EricTinyman

ackground

Currently, the top 60 pools by vote each month are eligible

I strongly support the proposal to reduce the number of eligible pools for TINY farming rewards from 60 to a more focused range, ideally around 30. Right now, spreading rewards across so many pools has led to a lot of low-liquidity pools being created just to farm votes, which doesn’t really add value to the Tinyman ecosystem. By concentrating rewards into fewer, higher-quality pools, we can make incentives much more meaningful for those who are truly providing liquidity and supporting real transactions. This would not only help deepen liquidity in the most active pools—making trading smoother and more efficient for everyone—but also reduce the dilution of rewards, so each participant gets a more substantial share. Plus, it becomes easier for genuine projects to gain visibility and attract users, which should drive more organic transaction volume and healthier on-chain activity overall. I do think it’s important to keep an eye on how this might affect smaller or newer projects, but maybe there could be ways to rotate pool eligibility or offer special support for innovative newcomers. Overall, focusing rewards on pools that actually drive transactions and benefit the community seems like the right move for Tinyman’s long-term growth and sustainability.

[ROAM]

Hi,

You have good points, but I think we have to set some kind of TVL based barriers (maybe). Amount of LP token holders is way too easy to manipulate. Trading volume is not so easy, but doable if requirement is low and it has to be if we look at Algorand trading volumes. So I think there are no easy solutions then.

Maybe that $10k TVL requirement is fair if we look at Algorand ecosystem size. I would still require some liquidity against ALGO, because that prevents some gaming. maybe $5k then? or will these requirements be so low at this point that someone from Europe (like me) or from USA can easily meet these requirements anyway and manipulate, because those amounts are already so low? So will TVL requirements prevent anything at this point?

If 6 month maturity requirement is not something we want, then we have to accept also the fact that those well known pump dumpers will continue to do so. Launch new token, allocate tiny power to lure people to buy TOKEN and farm and then malicious actor will dump. This will not benefit Tinyman or Algorand in the long-run. Ofc trading volume is good, but also means more sell pressure for TINY when people try to cover some losses → TINY sell pressure will lower overall farm values. Have to admit that I am not sure if this will be huge issue, but something to think about.

But yeah again. lowering pool amount will not solve the issue. I think there needs to be some other way to prevent these malicious farms or if there is no good solution, then we just have to live with it. After all we can’t get everything. you take good with bad.

Regards,
ROAM

[mangosteen]

Fully support this.

Rewards should be focused on pools which people are actually using to make swaps.

Once a project gains enough traction, then they can be eligible for rewards.

[MetaGrat]

I agree most of your comments. I think a minimum liquidity against ALGO is easiest to implement and works well.

On the technical side tinyman shows all LPs (14486 pools) during voting, they can filter those pools by TVL (they have that in the api call). So if an LP’s TVL is less than 5K $, they might be filtered out in the voting list, before the voting.

I have a webtool to follow and analyze tinyman voting, this is also where I get my data:
https://tinymanvotingtracker.vercel.app/

It gets a little complex when you look in more detail to current cycle:

• There are 14 LPs with has less than 5K $
• There are 4 LPs with has less than 1K $
• An LP with over 1 million votes has less than 5k $ TVL
• An LP with 0.5 million votes has less than 1k $ TVL

Current barrier for top 60 is: 155k votes
Current barrier for top 40 is: 250k votes
Current barrier for top 30 is: 300k votes

I think it is very very very clear that decreasing the number of pools will not help, it does not solve any problem at all.

So if tinyman was filtering out the pools with less than 1k $ TVL, instead of that 4 we would get:
LP1 - 147k votes in last voting
LP2 - 135k votes in last voting
LP3 - 107k votes in last voting
LP4 - 101k votes in last voting

So if tinyman was filtering out the pools with less than 5k $ TVL, instead of that 14 we would get:
LP1 - 135k votes in last voting
LP14 - 9673 votes in last voting (nine thousand six hundred votes!)

This brings me to the point I made about realistic TVL expactations. 5k is too high for Algorand. Sorry but it is too high. 1k $ or may be maximum 2k $ TVL will stop weird rugged LP pairs, anything more will do more damage than it repairs.

My final take on this:
Filter the LPs as per their TVL, do not display LPs which has less than 1,000 USD in TVL in voting, this way you’ll be preventing easy abuse without harming honest small/mid size projects.

Thanks for reading.

[mangosteen]

I have to disagree with most of your comments.

A good project doesn’t die because of all the points you mentioned. What you are implying is that a project can only succeed if they get tiny farming rewards - this is the wrong way to build a project in the first place.

Farming is secondary. Building a successful project is primary.

Purpose of farming is to further reinforce a successful project that already has good traction, users, and holders, and traders.

If you you think a project can only be successful if they get farming rewards then you’ve already failed.

Criteria’s for eligiblity needs to be set for which projects get farming rewards.

1. time - a project needs to be around for x amount of months/years before being eligible.

Amongst other points which other ppl have suggested too.

[MetaGrat]

Hi, I might have been misunderstood or weakly explained my opinion on filtering eligible pools on project age. I do not think tinyman farming is the only way a project can succeed. farming rewards is one of the available tools to bootstrap liquidity in the early stages for a project. dualstake tokens from myth finance is another tool to bootstrap liquidity for example. there are available tools and tinyman is one of them. I don’t think a project would be built on the sole purpose of getting farming rewards from tinyman or pact or myth or folks etc. The example I gave with my project was one of the many utilities of the project not the purpose of the project.

Apart from that, I don’t think 6 months or any other duration is a good eligibility criteria for a project. We have seen some very old very solid very proven projects fail, even this cycle there is a farming reward for a couple of dead/closed projects that had been around for years. Project age is not a value rank criteria honestly.

Also technically, how can one decide the age of a project, asset creation date, LP creation date? Tinyman has LP creation date for example, they can use this to filter eligible pools. Then what happens if a new pool is created by 2 “old” tokens. Someone will sit and go through all the pools and decide on a final list? I dont think this is a feasible solution.

I’m happy anyone to disagree my point of view on the matter, just wanted to try and explain my approach a little more clear.

[EricTinyman]

Thank you to everyone who took the time to share their thoughts and feedback.

We really appreciate the input and will be discussing the points raised internally with the team as we evaluate possible next steps. For now, the pool review process will continue to be handled manually, as before.

We will keep the community updated as we move forward. Thanks again for engaging and helping shape the future of Tinyman!

[Dave]

Hi all, I think it would already help to have a limit on APR. The limit on tiny APR per pool shouldn’t go above the APR offered in governance rewards. In this way we avoid ridiculous percentages that could likely be correlated to scam coins, and hopefully increase demand for governance participation, while still giving new & smaller project a chance. I don’t think anyone can argue that a APR >65% or so necesary.
The logistics on how to implement, I propose a daily check, before sending the rewards, and what to do with potential leftover tiny tokens would likely need a discussion as well (there is a nice proposal for a treasury pool)

[NerdyForDesign]

I agree strongly with these points, although I am meme-coin adverse in general, and almost all of my Tiny power continually goes towards incentivizing LST/tiny pairs due to the duel benefit of creating scarcity/encouraging use of said LSTs and Tiny, as well as backing projects that create duel-effects (incentivizing partner tokens that have the added benefit of helping lending markets like f-pairs aka: fusdc, fxalgo, ftalgo, fsilver$, fgold$.) and personally I’m pro anything that might even possibly move attention towards multi-benefit pairings.

I only wish the option existed to cut down on fragmentation with multi-token-pools so you could just have say one fusdx/fusdc/fxalgo/ftalgo/fcalgo swap pool rather than fragmentation of both liquidity and voting shares among pools and farm rewards.

I find meme coins (mostly) absolutely disastrous casinos sapping funds from real growth/value building areas on Algorand (gov tokens for platforms, increasing stablecoin holdings, builders like LOFTY that create valuable things, ftokens that contribute to greater synergy between platforms, etc,).

As for the fear that this will drive a sell of Tiny, well for one Tiny in Gov is already locked for years so I don’t see that being a real issue tbh.

The top three pools last voting round were:
Tiny/goBTC with 14.19%, Tiny/Algo with 11.39%, USDC/Algo with 10.05% a combined 35.63% of voting share ,and I don’t see this ending anytime soon regardless.

[NerdyForDesign]

There’s another option to help prevent gamification.

Several pools functional do mostly the same thing different ways, and if my understanding is correct, the system will use whatever gives you the best trade even if it may have to rout it through more than one pool.

We (tiny voters) could encourage focusing our votes for a bit around say:

• Talgo pools rather than algo pools.
• Fasset pools rather than asset pools.

Driving up the rewards for those specific pools and hopefully driving users towards moving liquidity from the underlying asset (algo) to the asset that adds more value (by compounding its use like say falgo in lending markets and talgo in staking, lending, and pooling).

Tiny/tAlgo rather than Tiny/Algo or Tiny/ftAlgo rather than Tiny/Algo.

From my understanding, as far as doing the most potential use for Algorand’s ecosystem and from an efficiency standpoint a tiny/ftalgo pool is a far better option than tiny/algo pairing if we can get enough locked into the tiny/ftalgo pool.

[wild]

something must be done to stop horrible pairs of what many would consider rug pulls from getting rewards. I don’t want to buy a token I would never hold just to farm tiny. tiny should be a reward for great assets that the tiny govs love, or at least like. wdyt?

[NerdyForDesign]

To some degree I would say that DYOR is best here, and remember that if something looks to good to be true it likely is.

No one should IMO be farming just for rewards, regardless if it’s 60% APR or 600%. Then again, I’m adverse to your average ASA. I only buy projects that I intend to hold long-term, and most of those tend to be governance tokens like Tiny, Pow, Folks when it drops, etc.

That being said, I do think the term “rug pull” is a little overused. Sometimes projects just have more hype than substance. Sometimes good intentions just fail.

I think the good way to beat potential gamers is to decide as a community what projects could have the most economic benefit for us as govs, for tinyman, and algorand as a whole, and coordinate our Tiny power (at least some of our voting share each cycle) towards those projects as a group of govs. Even smaller Tinypower govs grouped together can provide a decent APR boost to projects just agreeing to toss 5% or 10% each towards A, B, or C farm for a few cycles.

I mean there’s 147 Govs with 99.97k Tiny power or greater atm. It would only take a relatively small group to agree to get a pretty large farm behind some specific pairings and try to draw more liquidity into: like: the fTALGO/fxALGO pool and consider throwing some voting weight towards it and farming it a bit.

It could be made into a nice triple-bonus of consensus rewards, lending fees, and tiny rewards, creating both a stronger Tinyman and a stronger Folks Finance lending market. Atm the fees are not great, but if we added enough liquidity to it that could change as more people use the pool.

As a bonus, there’s not really much of an issue of IL here either.

Similarly pushing for a strong farming incentive behind fusdc/fgold and fusdc/fsilver benefits Folks Finance, Tinyman, and Meld Gold. The 1st, 5th, and 6th largest projects on Algorand by TVL.

[NerdyForDesign]

Just to show I’m putting my voting power towards where I think others should as well so you know I’m not talking out my ***

That’s two govs voting for the falgo/fusdc pool. Anyone else want to join?

This is a pool with 35% APR without a farm at all mind you. A decent farm push would could easily see a good amount of liquidity flowing in.

Also would it be possible to have a ranked voting option if we cut the pools? Expanded to say top 100 pools and you can pick a 2nd, 3rd, and 4th option for your votes should your initial pool selection not get enough votes?

Where your other options get replaced in for the pools that don’t get enough votes to be counted?