This wave we have 64,671 BAL available for new grantees, 50k general, ~15k moonshot projects (approved via BIP-517/snapshot). Following on from the quarter of reflections and subsequent report and recommendations, the grants program is focused on:
- Continue to mentor and deliver with existing grantees
The program currently has 10 live grantees building assorted integrations, novel use cases for Balancer pools, tooling, analytics and educational resources. These projects total ~$290k of committed funds yet to be paid for outstanding milestones. These can be reviewed on our Finalized and Live Grants Notion Page.
Deliverables: On-going support, monthly reports, coordination between Balancer entities.
2. Fund projects dedicated to increasing adoption of Balancer V3
With Balancer V3 launching in Q2 2024, grants will play a significant role in incentivising projects to:
- Integrate Balancer V3.
- Create educational content, tooling and docs to lower barriers to entry for teams building on V3
- Create new use cases with Balancer custom pools
- Bounties for highly active community members providing dev support, incentivizing integrations for analytics sites etc
Deliverables: Live Grant assessment sheet, monthly reports, weekly meetings
3. Set aside funding for research and moonshot projects
Separate the funding budget to include a portion of grants that are interesting but may not have a fully formed adoption plan. These are likely to be lower cost with no audit budget and could include:
- Novel research topics or custom pools from teams that may not intend to turn it into a protocol
- Research optimzation topics for existing infrastructure
Deliverables: Live Grant assessment sheet, monthly reports, weekly meetings
4. Funding categories
We have built a central hub for the tools that the community creates through grants or otherwise which lives at docs.balancer.fi/tools to make them more accessible for all.
We have added to our RFPs but we will always be open to new and unique ideas of how to improve and expand on Balancer’s flexible tech.
How have the grantees been building over February? Let’s find out below!
Grant Achievements
After receiving 14 applications, we have approved 2 grants across 2 teams for a total of 11,315 BAL.
Finalized Grants this month
- Protofire veLaunchpad — Wave 9
Protofire has completed the launchpad and deployed on all networks. The simple FE is hosted at docs.balancer.fi/tools/core/admin-ve8020 as a core tool with the factories deployed on all chains where Balancer is deployed. This FE is an example for protocols to fork and create their own.
Contracts Github repo — GitHub - protofire/ve8020-launchpad
Audited by Certora — Certora's specification and verification of the ve8020-Launchpad
We have had the first ve8020 system launched through this tool by THX Network who have provided feedback to improve the application. There a few more teams already interested in using this tool to join ve governance, keep an eye out for these projects as they come live.
Due to shifting priorities, Balancer Grants, GoodDollar and Symmetric have agreed to finish this grant prior to completion of the original scope. The project had evolved to relying on Managed Pools which is no longer being actively supported by the Balancer Team so the remaining funds have been recovered by the grants committee to spend on future teams.
Grantee Updates — Building
The program is proud to present our grantees and their updates in alphabetic order:
- Buidl Guidl — Wave 9
With V3 fast approaching, the Buidl Guidl team have pivoted and are underway creating scaffold-balancer based on V3 contracts. This will be an important addition to assist developers creating custom pools using V3 on top of the simplified environment. We hope to see this delivered in the next couple months.
- Ithil — Wave 5
With Q1 focus on their planned launch, Ithil will resume work on the Balancer integration and tackling the complexities of the protocol. We are in discussions whether this is better suited to waiting for V3.
- Xave Finance — Wave 7
We expect to release the final code-audited version of FXMetaPool before the end of Q1 (which is when we will deploy a new demo-able fxmetapool to FXMetaPool | Xave Finance for the grants committee).
Grants Program Expenses
About Balancer Grants
The BAL Grant program is one way Balancer DAO promotes the development of the Balancer Protocol and Ecosystem.
The BAL Grant program provides support and funding ($1K — $100K) to projects committed to supporting Balancer Protocol in achieving its mission to become the number one source for Decentralized exchange trades. This program is a good fit for individuals and groups that want to run a project that builds technology or resources on the Balancer Protocol.
We have a community powered Tools Hub and RFPs but we will always be open to new and unique ideas of how to improve and expand on Balancer’s flexible tech.
Wave 11 continues. Apply now!
If you are interested in supporting the development of the Balancer Ecosystem or want to build on top of the Balancer Protocol, this is your chance to be supported with BAL! Get started by filling in the Grants Application form. You can also check out our RFP page for inspiration! We also have an application guide for what we’re looking for in a grant submission here.
For further questions about how the Grants SP works, check out the grants page, follow us on Twitter, or send an email to grants@balancer.community.