“The Balancer Maxis believe in the long-term sustainability and success of the Balancer protocol. They actively bridge the gap between a wide range of ecosystem participants and encourage collaboration within the Balancer Ecosystem”
The Balancer Maxis are a grassroots workgroup funded by Balancer DAO, where community contributors come together to facilitate participation in the protocol’s future and long-term sustainability. As things have needed doing, the Maxis have stepped up and gotten them done. Engaging in many areas and with many players, the Maxis have proven to be a key component of Balancer.
Historically, the Balancer Maxis were formed by community contributors (aka Ballers) with a pulse on DAO related issues and the broader DeFi industry. The Maxis coordinate work with our partners, pool owners, major liquidity providers and governance participants. Attentive to new and existing projects and reaching out for mutually beneficial engagements.
Over time, our work has expanded to include operational aspects surrounding Balancer Governance. This includes facilitation of the governance process, supporting participants through it and educating them about it.
The Maxis build and verify changes specified by governance and coordinate execution with various Multisigs and partners who further verify and execute. The Maxis are also under the authorization and mandate of Balancer governance to manage revenue flows through the DAO, including fee flows and direct incentives originating from both the Balancer Treasury and external programs.
Strategy and Business Development
- Partner support
- Pool creation/whitelisting
- Gauge Creation
- Advisement of pool composition
- Technical support and best practices
- Governance guidance & Proposal Creation
- Infrastructure guidance (rate providers, etc)
- AMA’s and coordination of marketing efforts
- Incentive market advisory
- Liaison between partners and technical teams
- Work to find and engage new partners and ecosystem participants through:
- Networking
- Engaging with the community on Discord and other social media.
- Engaging with the larger Web3 community at IRL events.
- DeFi liaison for trends, opportunities and market shifts to support growth goals
- Custom pool creation
- New chain launches
- External incentives
- New asset classes
- New 8020 integrations
- Grant applications
- Strategy
- Working to facilitate the development of features our partners require
- Pool efficiency analysis
- Narrative creation
- Governance - coordination between various internal and external stakeholders for launch on new chains, migration events, and permissions updates.
- Apply for grants for co-incentives
- Propose and develop incentive programs
- Work with the veBAL system and free votes from various benefactors to optimise protocol revenue.
Governance and Protocol Operations
- Multisig and Governance + Administration and Transparency
- Building multisig payloads and conducting a multi-person review before loading.
- Providing advice to voters on governance topics surrounding technical and economic feasibility as well and risk.
- Participating in the veBAL ecosystem as delegates.
- Facilitating execution of approved governance.
- Operate transparently
- Multisig Ops repo provides a view of the multisig process and transactions planned/executed
- Maintain linkage between various sources of governance information (github, snapshots, forums, discord, etc)
- Ensure accuracy of off-chain data about on-chain operations.
- Gauge Voting list
- Pool and Token metadata, whitelists, etc.
- Tool creation to support operational tasks
- Pool creation, reward injector, etc.
- Increase automation and work to remove dependancies on specific human actors for governance to function.
- Fees and Incentives
- On-chain state
- Expertise permissions and authorisations to contracts within the Balancer Ecosystem.
- Proposing governance to configure new deployments.
- Maintenance of internal reporting and alternative views of ecosystem data through dashboards(Defilytica)
- Work towards developing, delivering and presenting data insights through reports and dashboards that help ecosystem participants understand key metrics and performance drivers for the DAO.
- Facilitating operational, governance and business development aspects of new releases, migrations, vulnerabilities and exploits.
Maxi Ecosystem Coordination
- Advise Foundation/OpCo on DAO Governance and Business Development
- Ecosystem Council Liaison
- Coordination with other entities as needed on ecosystem plans ([BIP-198])
- Monthly meetings
- Async comms
- Coordination with other entities as needed on ecosystem plans ([BIP-198])
- Risk inventory and assessment with GRC
- Interplay with GRC counselor to protect DAO and Balancer ecosystem
- Function Analysis for efficiencies, opportunities and operational gaps
- Updates on ecosystem function analysis worksheet
- Review of roles and risk assessment
- Other confidential documents
- Due diligence for new Service Providers
- Preparing, facilitating and reviewing KYB/KYC contracts
- Team and service providers
- Partnerships and co-marketing
- Preparing, facilitating and reviewing KYB/KYC contracts
- Github docs: weekly scanning for compliance on updates
Operational and Administration
- Balancer Maxi Operations
- Salary and bounty board payments
- Bounty board payments
- Github board tracking
- Notion updates and tracking
- Accountability updates (monthly forum posts)
- Community services and subscriptions
- Discord administration
- Discord moderation and safety
- Ecosystem Notion administration
- Community Newsletter: “The Balancer Report”
- Scammers and fake websites overwatch “Balancer Anti-Scam Initiative”
- HR Management Interface with for community contributors (Ballers)
- Onboarding new contributors to the ecosystem
- Offboarding contributors
- Regular sync and health-check
- Training and development
- Channelling inbound partnerships and co-marketing inquiries (Discord)
- Telegram group chats
- General inquiries
- Forwarding or adding relevant parties
- Ecosystem offsite planning (next one in April/24)
- Budget allocation
- Flights, hotel and transportations
- Meeting schedule
- Communication plan
- Activities, meals, etc.
). Going beyond the Baller role, we have a much more comprehensive set of tools to make sure contributors are talking to each other. This includes managing various channels and working to improve how information is shared, as appropriate.
