Summary
November has been an extremely busy but also successful month for us. A selection of highlights:
- Team participation at DevCon in Bangkok
- Securing launch partners for our v3 launch
- Formalizing and voting in of the v3 launch plan and protocol optimizations BIP
Personnel changes
Before we dive into our deliverables, I want to communicate that we are parting ways with @Tritium. He has been a very valuable contributor to the ecosystem for the last 2 years. He helped transition Maxis into the team we are today and was also significantly involved in dealing with the aftermath of the security vulnerability we had with boosted pools in Balancer v2. We thank him for his service and wish him all the best for his future endeavors.
We are very happy that @gosuto will join as a full-time contributor starting January 2025. He has established himself as a core contributor throughout his incredible work in the last six months. His vast knowledge in the finance sector as well as his deep developer experience make him an excellent fit for the Maxis. We are very glad to have him fully on board moving forward.
Initiative 1: Scale Balancer’s On-Chain DevOps Hub
We are continuing to optimize our processes while also preparing for v3 launch, which was our biggest focus also during DevCon. In terms of deliverables we
- Released injector v2 in production and tested all components
- Released fully functional UI for managing v2 injectors
- Worked on a Balancer v2 pool creator UI so that OpCo can sunset their old deployment (app.balancer.fi)
- Reviewed our fee allocator infrastructure and are very close to sunset the old code base
- Worked with Mimic to enable zkevm for fee sweeping
- Closely working together with Hypernative to enable auto pool pausing. We now have a test set-up on Sepolia. A proposal outlining the technical specifications will be shared soon
- Had a very productive meeting with @karpatkey where we discussed how to improve PURs and the Zodiac role modifier UI as @gosuto had to spent a lot of time reviewing those complex payloads
Also big shout-out to @gosuto for driving change and optimizing our automation pipelines even further
Preview of Ops UI Balancer v2 Pool creator UI to go live early December
Discretionary Budget Breakdown for October 2024
| Project | Budget spent |
|---|---|
| Operations: Enable Paladin HH recycling logic for vlAURA positions | $240 |
| Operations Front-end: Injector viewer dashboard, Injector v2 integration, Balancer v2 pool creator, wallet integration, Injector v2 payload builder | $3’810 |
| Operations: fix veBAL and DAO fee share logic in fee allocator v2 | $420 |
| Operations: Optimizations if no PROD subgraph is used, bal tools optimizations, adjustment of safe tx builder, add Paladin and HH addresses to address book | $1’320 |
| Operations: Paladin recycling testing, vlAURA vote review improvements based on failed tx in last fee sweeps, adjustments to v1 and v2 fee allocator workflows | $1’140 |
In total, we have spent $7’380 out of $15’000 USDC in discretionary funds for November 2024. Out of the 30’000 USDC allocated for Oct and Nov, we so far only utilized $16’287.50 USDC. We continue to allocate these funds as efficiently as possible.
Initiative 2: Support and execute on the launch of Balancer v3 and new Products
DevCon has been a very successful event for us. We met countless partners daily during the event and @ZenDragon has been doing incredible work securing an exciting set of launch partners for our v3 launch.
In parallel we aligned with Aura contributors on how the new fee model will impact the ecosystem. Thanks to our worksessions at DevCon we significantly improved BIP-734. I am very pleased with the overall result and can’t wait to see the new changes in action. What is absolutely clear is that partners welcome the new fee model and are willing to migrate to Balancer v3. This signals that we are on the right track to attract more liquidity in the space and become the primary hub for DeFi innovation.
Other initiatives
DAO Treasury Management
We had a productive work session with @karpatkey contributors at DevCon discussing how to scale treasury management. One of the key takeaways from the meeting was to increase transparency and readability in the Zodiac UI as well as exploring new options of signer composition in that multi-sig for faster transaction execution. Overall, we are very happy with the productive work relationship and also thank Dmitry to take the time to meet in Bangkok.
Market Makers
The re-evaluation and removal of the monitoring tag for BAL on Binance is still our top priority. We therefore increased orderbook depth for the main BAL:USDT pair to provide optimal trading experience on Binance. We are also exploring new avenues together with @lipman to foster MM execution on Balancer, meaning that liquidity will be hosted on our platform.
Data Providers
We were also in talks with TokenTerminal and other data providers to support Balancer v3 once it launches. We will share more details once they are available. Main objective is to make sure Balancer v3 is supported as soon as it goes live.
Conclusion
We are fully committed to make Balancer v3 a great success by pushing the protocol with initiatives like the optimized fee model forward. Balancer is extremely well positioned to make a huge impact in the DeFi space. Now we are also technically ready to scale. Our primary distinction factor is and will be our excellent white glove service so that Balancer becomes the home of DeFi innovation.
