Summary
- We achieved all our set goals for the funding period for Q4 2024 to Q1 2025 with the exception of fee processing not going live yet because of smart contract delays and limitations (see BIP-804)
- With our conservative spendings we saved more than $75k USDC that were deducted from our renewed funding proposal
- Our key take aways for the last two quarters can be summarized as follows:
- Self-service management efforts start to pay off and scale
- On-chain operations and automation continuously improve and require less man power to operate
- Improving the efficiency of the DAO multi-sig execution speed is one of our main focus points for Q2 2025 and moving forward
Based on the above summary, let’s make a review of our initiatives and how we performed over the last 2 quarters
Initiative 1: Scale Balancer’s On-Chain DevOps Hub
During Q4 our team composition changed significantly, with Tritium departing and gosuto taking over his duties. Additionally, we hired jalbrekt as a part-time contributor to fully focus on our fee processing code base and owning that domain. Looking back at these personnel changes, we can confidently say that this was the right move as we have optimized our DevOps footprint by reducing it by 1 FTE while maintaining high efficiency. The main factors for this achievement can be attributed to more efficient workflows within our team, increased automation and our additional focus on self-service management with the Ops UI
I want to emphasize that @gosuto and @jalbrekt in particular have done excellent work in optimizing our domain of operations with simplified checklists and a lot of automation where possible. As a prime example, our fee processing that took a lot of manual intervention in 2024 is now at a semi-automatic state where only minor reviews are needed for it to be shipped.
In combination with our Ops UI, we are now excited to see that partners are using it and can even manage incentives with our injector v2 infrastructure independently. This is significant for us, as this massively decreases our workload during hectic weeks where lots of operational tasks need to be delivered,
The only major point of improvement in py point of view is the optimization of the speed of DAO payload executions. We switched to monthly batches, but it still takes some time to gather the necessary signers to execute the payloads. This is something we will monitor and continue to improve in Q2.
Discretionary Budget Breakdown for March 2025
As per usual, I want to give a final update on our spending numbers. Based on the previous funding proposal, we allocated $15k in discretionary funds to freelancers and additional dev work. We were using very little of those funds and only had to spend $4,380 of the allocated $15k for March. Below a detailed breakdown:
| Project | Budget spent |
|---|---|
| Ops UI: Injector viewer and configurator improvements | $1,440 |
| Ops UI: Buffer viewer UX and buffer payload builder improvements | $1,260 |
| Ops UI: StableSurge Hook Payload Builder and generalized payload builder refactors | $1,200 |
| Operations: Subscriptions (Vercel, Miro) for 6 months | $480 |
In total, we saved $75,011 USDC which we deducted from our renewed funding request at the end of March.
As a result, we also adjusted our funding request for discretionary costs down to $5k USDC as this better reflects our needs.
Key takeaways
- Highly improved operations flows thanks to increased automation
- Self-service management modules are being used by partners and reduce operational load on the team
- Multi-sig processes can be further improved
Initiative 2: Support and execute on the launch of Balancer v3 and new Products
This was one of our biggest and most important initiatives during this funding period. @ZenDragon and colleagues exceeded all expectations and onboarded many projects to Balancer v3 - with more coming in Q2. The Maxis additionally played a crucial part in rolling out v3 as we coordinated rate provider provisioning and reviews, pool creation and configuration, coordination of partner requests for liquidity and incentive provisioning as well as setting up a bootstrapping plan for USDC incentives from our HH refund. Overall, we are satisfied with the launch and are approaching $100mln in TVL despite the rather difficult market conditions in Q1 2025. Overall metrics are looking very positive, especially liquidity utilization (>1.4bln in volume for 93mln in TVL)
Another great success of this initiative were the exciting deployments of oracle pools showing incredible performance - even compared to univ2
In terms of our fee processing on v3, our code-base is nearly ready but the protocol fee controller migration forced us to wait for fully going online with the new fee model voted in with BIP-734 - our goal is to go online as soon as the migration is concluded. First dry runs of our infrastructure show promising results. We will keep the community updated in the end of April update on how this will perform.
Key take aways
- A successful v3 launch
- Maxis were significantly driving a successful launch execution
- Fee processing had some delays because of infrastructure migration (smart contracts), but is expected to go live very soon
Initiative 3: Partner Management
@ZenDragon, @Mike and @zekraken have been doing exceptional work in handling partner requests and providing white glove support to our key partners. In terms of objectives, all of them were met. One very nice development is the recent automation of rate provider reviews by @mkflow - Maxis advised to make sure the process will take less time and be as efficient as possible. Rate provider reviews in particular were a significant bottleneck in launching new pools and gauges up until now.
Another big milestone is the Balancer alliance proposal that was in the works during March. This is one of the most significant proposals to date and will drive veBAL forward!
Key take aways:
- We continued to deliver excellent white glove services to key partners
- We improved our internal processes to increase our product deployment turnaround time
- The Balancer Alliance proposal as a significant milestone in veBAL and fee sharing optimization
Conclusion
Looking back at the Q4 2024 to Q1 2025 funding round I see following points as successes and a set of challenges that need to be addressed
Successes
- Fully established DevOps team with high level of automation and best practices in place
- Professional multi-sig management and security standards
- Continued first-in-class white glove services
- Big improvements towards self-service handling of operations
Challenges that need to be addressed
- For the DAO multi-sig: find a balance between fast on-chain execution and careful peer reviews
- Fully execute on in-house fee processing and simplify as much as possible (incl. New fee models such as the potential Balancer alliance)
Overall, we can look back at a very successful 6 months where we achieved many of our objectives or even surpassed them. There are still a few pieces of the optimization puzzle missing, but I am confident that we can address them easily given we have such a high performing team since the end of Q1 2025. Onwards.
