The Maxis had to overcome interesting challenges in Q3. The most notable one being the monitoring tag of BAL on Binance. This lead to increasing workload by talking to more than 7 market makers and preparing a deal to utilize with 1mln BAL tokens for the upcoming 12-18 months. Other notable work packages consist of the introduction of an operations UI that will streamline our workloads significantly for us and partners alike
Below is a summary of our work conducted in July
Initiative 1: On-chain DevOps Hub
The work of the recent months is finally coming to fruition. Our operations code-base has matured significantly while our internal processes have also massively improved. As per new guidelines, any on-chain transaction will go through a rigid review process and commissioning of artifacts in our operations repositories like multi-sig ops.
An exciting new development is the Operations UI project that myself and Hyferion are building. It will heavily rely on our infrastructure that Tritium, gosuto and many others have contributed to.
Below is a sneak-peak of how the operations UI prototype
Core features include:
- Balancer address book validation
- Tenderly simulations
- GitHub integration
- Reward Injector viewers
- And much more
Here is a detailed breakdown of of the goals achieved compared to our proposal goals:
- Operate and maintain new chain deployments
- We successfully deployed with the help from BLabs on Mode and Fraxtal
- Wired up veBAL boost infrastructure for Fraxtal and identified a misconfiguration and fixed it
- Upgrade OZ infrastructure for Fraxtal to bridge BAL rewards (successful run last week)
- Fee Processing
- Currently performing parallel runs with the new bal_tools repository to compare outcomes
- Optimization of bribe redistribution across markets
- Secondary Token Reward Management
- Final testing of of new injector code
- Final review by BLabs contributors
- AURA Position Management
- Extension of final batch of AURA claims and lock
- vlAURA module now mostly semi-automatic. Provisioning of a csv with the voting configuration is sufficient to automatically cast a vote on-chain
- Gauges and Core Pools
- Continued maintenance of automatic flagging
- Making sure Gyro fee settings are correctly propagated to our core pool list
- Execution of token grants
- Successful execution of rounds 1 and 2 of the ARB LLTIP grant
- Partner support for direct incentives, notably TokenLogic and GHO incentive programs
- Working together with partners to
- Omni-Chain operations
- New Omnichain multisig in operation
- Monitoring for Link usage established, will be integrated in Ops UI
- Analytics
- Exploring of Paladin integration
- Consulting with backend team to build an in-house voting market indexing service
Discretionary Budget Breakdown
| Project | Budget spent |
|---|---|
| Operations: Fee Allocator code Base | $1’980 |
| Operations: Transaction builders | $2’760 |
| Operations Front-end | $1’560 |
| Injector V2 | $645 |
| Infrastructure Maintenance (OZ) | $840 |
The Maxis handled the discretionary budget as conservatively as possible and spent $7’785 on freelance development resources dedicated to the most important initiatives.
Initiative 2: Support and execution of Growth Initiatives and Product Launches
The Maxis continue to be the primary point of contact for partners by collaborating effectively with the BD Unit. We are in the process of constantly onboarding new partners as well as design and ship various token grants such as upcoming projects on Mode and Fraxtal.
Additionally, we closely support the imminent launch of CoWAMM by providing input on pool designs, key decisions and launch plan incl. On-chain execution
Other Initiatives
Market Makers
Gosuto, Danko and myself have spent a considerable amount of time talking to various market makers to strike an optimal deal for the DAO to improve our CEX liquidity. Karpatkey provided important support in connecting with partners and decision making. As soon as we have the finalized details, we will inform the community of next steps.
Lead ZEN UI Beta Test
Tritium was a key player in designing and leading the ZEN UI beta test incl. The beta tester rewards program. This program was a huge success and helped us identify many bugs that could be fixed for release. Thanks to the beta testing program, we had a very smooth launch in mid July thanks to the great feedback and efforts from all people involved.
Optimizing auraBAL peg
The Maxis further supported AURA contributors in finding ways to optimize the auraBAL peg on mainnet. To achieve this goal we have concluded work on 2 initiatives:
- Fix trading routes by provisioning a hard-coded route in the ZEN UI
- Put forward a proposal to provide POL in a 80BAL-20WETH:WETH pool that should act as a liquidity source to stabilize trading routes and indirectly improve the pricing situation for tokens like auraBAL and sdBAL.
Conclusion
The Maxis continue to be the main interface between the DAO and external partners. We are continuing to optimize our operations workflows to be as best positioned as possible for the imminent launches of CoWAMM and the future launch of Balancer v3. We are well on track and are excited to see how the ecosystem will grow in the future, despite tough market conditions.
As always, we will continue to serve the DAO passionately and make sure Balancer is continued to be seen as a professional and reputable DEX.