Summary
- We worked together with the smart contracts team to improve Balancer v3 fee processing, by identifying bugs associated with the CoW burner infrastructure. Additionally, we worked together with Mimic to deploy a Mimic Burner on Avalanche which goes live in early June
- We successfully processed the first round of Balancer Alliance Fee Share to Rocket
- Our focus to simplify and improve operations is reflected in putting forward key governance proposals such as sunsetting of Fraxtal chain (incl. Fee handling), migration of the DAOs vlAURA position and snapshot guidelines that will go into effect early June 2025
- In terms of team composition, it saddens us to communicate that @ZenDragon will leave the Balancer ecosystem. As a result, BD initiatives will now be led by @Marcus until a new BD team has been formed. As a result, the Maxis will fully focus on operations and technical partner management moving forward.
Personnel Changes
The biggest news from the Maxis is that @ZenDragon has decided to move on and leave Balancer DAO as per the end of June. This has a significant impact on our designated initiatives. As a result, our outlined targets for initiative growth will be redistributed amongst ecosystem leaders. The DAO is actively looking for a new BD team as a result. For the Maxis, this means our focus continues to be on 2 key pillars: excellence in onchain operations and security as well as white glove partner management services. Therefore, @zekraken will step up and increase his mandate to 1 FTE and will take over the lead in partner operations starting July. All funds saved as a result of our lower overall headcount will be reported and saved for later usage by the DAO.
Initiative 1: Onchain Operations and Security Management (DevSecOps)
Fee Processing Infrastructure Optimization
Building on April’s successful v3 fee processing launch, May focused on operational refinements and bug fixes. We executed multiple fee processing cycles, including addressing Fraxtal chain issues where nearly $50k in fees were rescued following a chain upgrade. We identified an issue with unwrapping of ERC4626 tokens. Together with the smart contracts team, we identified the issues rapidly and they deployed new contracts that will be tested in June. Additionally, we made progress on the Mimic setup for Avalanche to automate v3 fee processing on that network, working closely with the Mimic team to finalize the integration.
Furthermore, we improved our codebase to handle Balancer alliance fee redistribution and successfully performed the first fee share with Rocket mid May.
DAO Multi-sig Operations
The team executed several critical payload bundles throughout May, including:
- StableSurge v2 permissions
- BAL token transfers for various initiatives
- ProtocolFeeSweeper v2 upgrades
- Balancer Alliance whitelist of Rocket multi-sig incl. A kickstart grant
- Balancer Alliance whitelist of Lido multi-sig incl. A kickstart grant
We advanced the DAO multi-sig optimization proposal developed with the Foundation, aiming to streamline signer configuration and improve execution efficiency.
Security Infrastructure Development
Working with Hypernative, we finalized the security setup for both Balancer v2 and v3, establishing comprehensive monitoring and alert systems. The internal security committee continued coordination meetings to align security practices across all protocol components.
Operations UI Enhancements
Continued improvements to the Operations UI included incentive management improvements, payload builder enhancements, and general code base clean-up. These improvements support our growing partner ecosystem’s self-service capabilities.
Analytics
As part of our ongoing initiative to bring transparency to DAO profitability, we presented a study on how we can achieve profitability within the next year. Additionally, we are working on publishing multiple dune dashboards that will help analyze DAO profitability and how well the Balancer Alliance program performs. This is a natural fit, given we are at the intersection of operating fee processing onchain and understanding the ecosystem holistically.
Initiative 2: Growth and Strategic Partnerships
Balancer Alliance Program Implementation
May saw significant advancement of the Balancer Alliance program, with both Rocket Pool and Lido moving forward with their proposals. The program code base was finalized and prepared for the first live implementation with Rocket Pool, scheduled for late May. We updated the Alliance configuration for Lido and guided the necessary governance proposals for both strategic partnerships.
Chain Expansion and Partner Integration
We continued supporting Avalanche ecosystem growth, working on merit reward redistribution mechanisms and expanding partner integrations. The Fraxtal chain situation required careful coordination to gracefully shut down operations while preserving accumulated fees for redistribution to veBAL holders.
Governance Token Venue Expansion
Advanced discussions with protocols seeking to leverage Balancer v3 as their governance token venue, building on the success of 8020 pools for governance applications.
Initiative 3: Interfacing with Product Development
Continued Volume Generation
Our internal arbitrage bot infrastructure continued generating volume for new pool types, particularly supporting the discovery and optimization of MEV hook pools and other innovative pool designs. This infrastructure proves essential for testing new functionality before broader aggregator integration.
Product Testing and Support
Continued testing and optimization of various pool types including oracle pools with surge hooks and reCLAMM implementations. Our testing infrastructure provides valuable feedback to the product development team and helps optimize parameters for different token pairings and market conditions.
Governance Initiatives
Key Proposals Advanced
- vlAURA Migration: Prepared comprehensive migration proposal with dedicated multi-sig configuration for mainnet and Arbitrum deployments
- Snapshot Guidelines: Drafted and advanced BIP for standardizing snapshot voting procedures
- KPK Sub-roles: Finalized architecture review for sub-role delegation framework
- Fraxtal Sunset: Prepared proposal for graceful Fraxtal chain shutdown and fee redistribution
- Treasury migration: initiated discussions with kpk and other stakeholders towards a more simplified and efficient onchain treasury
Process Improvements
Established clearer guidelines for governance proposal advancement and multi-sig execution coordination, improving overall operational efficiency.
Budget for May 2025
The designated budget of $5k continues to work well so far. For the month of May we had an extra cost point to conduct an external audit to review the kpk subroles module. The external review also gave us certainty that kpk’s proposed changes were submitted as intended.
| Resort | Amount | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Operations UI | $2,970 | UX and performance improvements for the following components: Liquidity Buffer viewer and configurator, Injector viewer, injector status board, injector payload builder |
| Payload Reviews | $2,000 | External review of the kpk subroles module given the complexity of the roles configuration change |
With this cost point we are coming close to our monthly target of $5k, resulting in $4,970 in total discretionary costs for freelancer services. Overall, the budget is well within limits. Out of the $10,000 available to us for April and May, we utilized $7,790. We will continue to use these funds only when needed.
Conclusion
Looking ahead to June, our focus will be on:
- Completing Balancer Alliance program implementation with initial partners
- Finalizing v3 security monitoring infrastructure
- Continuing operational efficiency improvements
- Supporting expanded chain operations and partner integrations
The team remains on track to deliver on all major Q2-Q3 commitments while maintaining operational excellence and supporting the growing Balancer ecosystem.