MARS holders who wish to participate in governance can stake their MARS tokens and receive xMARS in return, with an unstaking period of 7 days. xMARS has a few key properties:
Governance: 1 xMARS = 1 unit of voting power. Only xMARS (and MARS that’s locked for Mars Joint Venture contributors) can participate in governance, making decisions on asset listing, risk parameters, treasury spending and more.
Fees: xMARS holders receive a share of protocol interest-rate revenue. Similarly to SushiSwap’s SushiBar contract, this is done by using the revenue to buy MARS on the open market and adding it to the xMARS pool.
Safety Fund: xMARS holders backstop protocol risk. A pool of reserved aUST (the ‘Safety Fund’) is used as a first-resort source of recovery for shortfall events. Staked Mars is used as a last-resort source of recovery for Shortfall Events, with up to 30% of their stake being locked and sold in case of a shortfall event