Balancer Maxis October 2022 Update

October brought a relative calm to the Balancer ecosystem as far as governance goes. With the framework and new pool factories behind us this month saw a large expansion in interest bearing liquidity (IBL) across all of Balancer’s networks. The number of gauges with IBL is ~16 and these are all seeing “voting incentives” provided under BIP-19. The launch of generalized boosted pool functionality on the UI next month will provide a further growth catalyst around IBL - for now we press forward with efforts focused around wstETH, rETH, and bbaUSD.

These efforts have begun showing promising results on Polygon and Arbitrum as Balancer has entered the top 5 in TVL on Polygon and top 10 in Arbitrum. The revenue from IBL combined with distributing that via “voting incentives” has created a positive sum flywheel leading to more TVL and more revenue. As we move forward we’ll be expanding into non-correlated pairings like wstETH/bbaUSD in an effort to drive more trading activity through these assets. First we win on TVL & revenue, then we win on volume.

With that, here are the bullet point updates for October. For reference, please review BIP-74 which funded the Balancer Maxis for Q4.

  • Multisig Management

    • Three pools had swap fees changed - all were reduced in an effort to drive additional volume through IBL.
    • Thirteen new gauges were approved & added to the voting list, all focused around IBL.
    • Two protocol fee distributions took place for a total of $683k (voting incentives, Treasury, veBAL)
    • The DAO Multisig executed a total of 5 transactions
  • Governance

    • The Governance Council approved 18 proposals for snapshot voting
    • Maxis authored a significant number of approved proposals, including many gauges for IBL
    • Four out of the six Maxis are active delegates.
    • Optimism
      • $3.1k revenue sent to veBAL during the month.
      • We’re live with boosted pools on Optimism. Currently working with aggregators to support the liquidity for trading. Expect to see more expansion of IBL as we work with more partners and expand our current offerings.
    • BIP-19
      • Most recent voting period set a new record for “voting incentives” under this program - $205k.
      • More and more of Balancer’s protocol revenue is from IBL
      • wstETH/bbaUSD currently ramping up and expected to be one of our top pools
      • See more detailed stats here.
    • Metagovernance: None during the month
  • User/Project Support

    • Github commits made to the frontend repo that included participation from the Maxis
      • 14 token/stable pool whitelistings
      • 12 gauges added to the gauge voting list
      • Partnered with frontend team to begin deprecating old pools/tokens (ex. Aave boosted pool v1)
    • Telegram chats picking up as the Maxis take a more active role in partnerships within the Balancer ecosystem.
    • Weekly testing of the UI continues! Gold star to zekraken
  • Community

    • Coordinape circle is open with 13 participants;
    • 6 contributors on the onboarding process.
    • Health-checks compiled on Maxi Notion, showing positive sentiment and commitment for contributing to Balancer DAO, specially after the new Q3 framework;
  • DAO Dev Work

    • Deployment of ~19 pools for various purposes (new core pools, partner pools, testing pools)
    • Balancer tools (balancer.tools): updated veBAL calculator with newly added gauges
    • Balancer analytics (info.balancer.xeonus.io): integrated CoinGecko as the only source of price information which is now in line with the Balancer front-end
  • Record Keeping

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