$IPOR itself has little use outside of being an investment vehicle. However, its staked counterpart known as $pwIPOR plays a vital role in the protocol. 
Primarily in:
- Governance over the Index and AMM parameters –here its utility is that of a governance token 
- Directing liquidity mining emissions –here its utility is that of a bootstrapping token.

It should be noted that there could be future use cases which would have to be proposed through an open governance procedure.

Governance over IPOR index & derivatives instruments:
- Money markets: They desire governance power to be included in the IPOR index, benefiting from increased liquidity by receiving assets from the Asset Management system.
- Asset issuers: they desire governance power to establish IPOR indices for their assets, expanding borrowing and lending opportunities.
- Other blockchains: Chains seeking to launch native IPOR indices have the incentive to acquire governance power
- DAOs seeking to optimize capital efficiency and leverage IPOR's interest rate swaps are incentivized to acquire governance power, enabling better tuning of the AMM and utilization of pool liquidity.

Liquidity Mining module:
- The pwToken system allows locking and delegation of $IPOR to various pools in the Liquidity Mining module. Users earn rewards in the form of $pwIPOR. The rewards are determined by the user's staked ipToken balance (USDC, USDT, or DAI) and their pwIPOR balance delegated to a specific asset.

IPOR Index:
The IPOR Index fills a crucial gap in the DeFi market by providing a benchmark interest rate and enabling the development of derivative products. For example, a new money market can use the IPOR rate as a reference for its credit market, facilitating the possibility of a fixed-income market in the future. This addresses the absence of a prominent benchmark rate in DeFi and allows for better risk management and onboarding of traditional fixed-income markets. IPOR aims to expand its offerings, including an IPOR Index for ETH and longer maturity interest rate swaps, to enhance capital efficiency and offer more flexibility to traders.

Interest Rate Swaps (IRS):
Interest rate swaps are essential for fixed-income participants to manage interest rate risk effectively. These derivatives provide the ability to convert between fixed-rate and floating-rate debt, contributing to the convergence of fixed interest rates across markets. Standardization is crucial to avoid fragmented liquidity and increased market risk. Harmonizing interest rate swaps across stablecoin pairs ensures efficient capital allocation and improved liquidity for derivatives.

pwTOKENS:
The pwToken model, developed by IPOR, is a new tokenomic primitive that serves as a public good and has its initial implementation within IPOR itself.

Overall Goal:
IPOR aims to bring standardization to the industry by providing a benchmark instrument for pegging other financial instruments. It seeks to establish a yield curve and a standardized index that represents the expected interest rates for various loan durations. Currently, IPOR rates reflect spot rates, but future iterations will introduce rates for different time periods. Achieving these goals is crucial for the future of DeFi, considering the immense value of the TradFi fixed income market.

Value accrual to token:
The pwToken system allows users to stake IPOR tokens, positively impacting the token price. The extent of staking depends on the use case of $pwIPOR, which is correlated with the demand for the available pwToken modules: Governance and Liquidity Mining.

Value accrual to protocol:
Currently, the IPOR protocol does not directly benefit from fees and revenue generated. However, there is currently an active governance proposal stating a 10% fee on Swap Openings, this could create inflow to the treasury.  
Note that if IPOR's public goods, such as the IPOR Index and pwToken model, become industry standards, the protocol can gain mindshare and indirect value accrual.

Revenue comes from:
- Fee that is taken from borrower/lender to open a swap
- Fee from other LPs withdrawing liquidity (0,5% withdrawal fee)
- Net PnL: net outcome of swap
- Percentage of money market fee since 95% of idle collateral in AMM is deployed and generates yield

Revenue is denominated in:
- USDC, USDT, DAI on all fees and yield

Revenue goes to:
- LPs: who earn all fees and liquidity mining incentives ($pwIPOR)
- SOAP: if traders win LPs lose, if traders lose LPs win.