BalancerDAO Partnership with Polygon DAO

Governance General Proposal
1

SUMMARY

  • Polygon Ecosystem DAO has the aim of creating a decentralised community of people and projects willing to bring value to Polygon for the benefit of all its participants
  • Polygon Foundation has funded the Polygon Ecosystem DAO with 1M USD
  • The DAO will establish the DApps Council, in which projects may contribute to allocate grants and take strategic decisions.
  • 6 months membership in the Polygon DAO DApps Council requires a contribution of 100k USD in native tokens or USDC
  • Balancer should be a strategic partner and one of the founding members of the DApps Council

BACKGROUND

Polygon Ecosystem DAO was born in the last quarter of 2021 with the aim of creating a decentralized community where all projects that bring value to the chain can collaborate together and shape the future trajectory of the ecosystem.

The newborn DAO should become the perfect location to onboard innovative projects, to shape new strategies of interoperability between DeFi protocols and to augment the use cases on the Polygon network.

During Season 0, the Genesis Team started the operations of the Polygon Ecosystem DAO, which got support from Polygon foundation with a grant of 1M USD, which currently forms the treasury of the DAO.

The DAO is using the funding to allocate small grants to people seeking to develop new ideas on Polygon and to pay contributors. To date, the DAO has received more than 140 grant applications from various projects and numbers are steadily growing.

Relevant Links:

https://twitter.com/0xPolygonDao

In Season 1, starting from February 2022, the Polygon Ecosystem DAO will decentralize its operations and set up a brand-new governance structure and tokenomics. It will organize teams of contributors and provide bounties to people aiming to help. More importantly, it will further implement a procedure to allocate grants of bigger size to promising projects willing to build on Polygon. The DAO should strengthen the reasons why people should decide to start building on Polygon.

As Balancer is one of the most important DeFi protocols on Polygon, we think that a strong strategic partnership at an early stage would be beneficial for both parties. In this regard, Polygon’s team has in the last weeks presented its project to Andrea, BalancerDAO Partnership Lead, in order to start discussions.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

  1. Membership in the Polygon Ecosystem DAO DApps Council

During Season 1, the Polygon Ecosystem DAO will create the DApps Council in order to decentralize the Polygon Ecosystem governance, in giving power to the projects, which were able to bring value to the Polygon chains. This is why the primary focus of the DApps Council will be awarding grants to “younger” projects that deserve financial help to bring significant value to the ecosystem in terms of quality and creativity.

We would like to propose the BalancerDAO to join the DApps Council as a founding member together with other prominent DeFi protocols such as AAVE and 0x Protocol!

From a practical point of view:

  • A selected team of the Polygon Ecosystem DAO will organize the work-flow through programs/dashboards and exercise a first scrutiny on the projects presented by the applicants in order to prepare them for the DApps Council vote
  • The DApps Council members will have access to the relevant documents/links and may contact the applicants to get additional information and to provide suggestions
  • Once this clarification stage will be concluded, the DApps Council will vote on the grants requests
  • DApps Council members will have their wallet whitelisted in a customized Snapshot strategy
  • The grants requests will be presented by a selected Polygon Ecosystem DAO Team on Snapshot on a weekly basis
  1. Framing a New Governance Model for the Polygon Ecosystem DAO

The Polygon Ecosystem DAO aims at becoming the DAO of the DAOs. Such a goal can be achieved only in granting decision-making power to the projects that have already been built on Polygon.

In this regard, the DAO wants to set-up a new governance model, which will connect tokenized voting to reputational aspects. It will take advantage of the most disruptive DAO tooling available on the market. Consultations with service providers are going on almost every day and the general framework will be designed during Season 1.

Balancer will have a say in framing the future governance structure!

  1. Organize DAO Operations and Onboard Contributors

“Inclusiveness” will be the main point of reference in the onboarding procedures of the DAO. Anyone willing to collaborate and bring value to the DAO will have the chance to demonstrate their skills.

The DAO will establish different avenues to contribute: fixed compensation schemes for recurring tasks, bounties for selected activities, etc. On the basis of the output, people will acquire reputational recognition in the form of NFTs.

Balancer will extract talent from the Ecosystem DAO!

  1. Specific benefits for Balancer

The participation to the proposed program will assure the following direct and indirect benefits to your organization:

  • Augment Polygon’s TVL through the growth of the Polygon Ecosystem and augment the volume of Balancer protocol on Polygon
  • Being presented as Polygon’s strategic partner
  • Contribute directly to the development of the ecosystem, deciding on the awarding of grants
  • Having a dedicated channel in the PolygonDAO Discord Server, in which to act as administrators, so as to create synergies between communities
  • Being able to contact all the Polygon DAO participants directly: the Polygon Team, the DAO Team, the contributors, the projects and the community
  • Build partnerships, campaigns and projects with PolygonDAO, financed by the revenues obtained from the implementation of the DAO DeFi Treasury
  • Have direct contact with the most promising DeFi projects in the ecosystem, in order to foster interoperability between protocols and build money-legos
  • Having the possibility to team-up with DApps Council participants on matters related to the growth of the Polygon ecosystem in terms of composability and creation of value.

FUNDING REQUEST

  1. DApps Council participation

For the participation in the DApps Council for the year 2022, Balancer should provide an allocation of

  • 100K USD in native tokens or USDC

The funding will form part of the DAO Treasury. The allocation can be transferred in native tokens or USDC in 4 installments (4x25k).

  1. Utilization of the DAO Treasury

Amounts committed by Council members will be utilized as follows:

  1. Used to grant grants to third-party projects that request them from Polygon Ecosystem DAO
  2. Stored in the DAO DeFi Treasury for governance token accumulation and swap operations
  3. Used for operational and community costs of the DAO

Depending on the amount raised, the funds will be allocated accordingly:

  • raised up to USD 1,000,000: â—‹ A: 75% â—‹ B: 12,5% â—‹ C: 12,5%
  • raised up to USD 1,500,000: â—‹ A: 76,5% â—‹ B: 12,5% â—‹ C: 11%
  • raised up to and above USD 2,000,000: â—‹ A: 77,5% â—‹ B: 12,5% â—‹ C: 10%

MILESTONES

  1. Set-up of the DApps Council
  2. Allocation of 700k USD in grants during Season 1
  3. Framing of the Polygon Ecosystem DAO governance
2
  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

1 Like
3

I guess you are the owner of this from our side Andrea? fwiw I don’t think this is worth 100k from us. The polygon hackathon we sponsored was a pretty big disappointment - feels like our money will get spent on mostly things that don’t benefit Balancer at all but do benefit Polygon. But, consider my support for this going to a vote since I assume most other ppl are in favor of this.

I think it would be best if you could find out the address we need to send BAL to and the dates of the four requested transfers so that can be included in the vote. This makes things easier for the DAO Multisig signers to verify what they’re signing.

1 Like
4

@solarcurve ,

look, I can see the risks associated with this initiative and I also see the price tag which, at current market conditions, is substantial.

I wanted to have the community feedback on the proposal and have an open conversation about this.

Aave, UMA, 0x plus others, are all participating and I can see this as an opportunity to collaborate with all of them more closely.

The final decision is on the hands of the community, as always.

3 Likes
5

Wow great writeup Andrea. This seems like a grand effort. I basically have two main questions:

  1. Why is it more beneficial trying to grow the Balancer ecosystem on Polygon if Balancer becomes partners with Polygon DAO compared to simply taking the 100k USDC + cost of DAO members to create pathways of direct value accrual to Balancer?
  2. As this looks like a resource-intensive task for the DAO what is the expected workload coming for the DAO members as we would be involved in:
  • Decision of grant allocations
  • Checking PolygonDAO Discord for interest on Balancer (We now would need to monitor 2 Discords)
  • Trying to develop the Polygon ecosystem.

Does Balancer need PolygonDAO to get in contact with the most promising DeFi projects? Maybe we could utilize these funds better if we directly incentivize #BuiltOnBalancer.

I feel us trying to grow the Balancer ecosystem via Polygon ecosystem growth might get complicated.
What does everyone else think?

2 Likes
6

I believe Andrea will be our representative on the council and will consult with the grants subDAO as applications come up. Maybe Andrea can share more info about how all that will work

1 Like
7

Hello @solarcurve and @Mkflow27 !

Thank you very much for your comments. I am a core contributor at the newborn Polygon DAO and I would be really happy to discuss every aspect of the proposed collaboration.

What I can say here is that the partnership does not only concern the awarding of grants. It primarily aims at building a new community of DeFi applications on Polygon. The aim is to decentralize operations, onboard new promising projects and create innovative cases of DeFi interoperability. In this context, I think that Balancer could have a very important role through its community and its products. A lot of new projects could take advantage of the bootstrapping pools and begin to build liquidity on Balancer. Moreover, part of the grant could also be awarded through pool incentives.

@solarcurve I am sad to hear that the Hackathon has been a delusion. The aim here is really to take decisions together and avoid such a kind of bad experiences.

@Mkflow27 the amount of work for Balancer will not be enormous. We are creating a team of people which will carefully analyze the grants proposals. You will take position only on the most promising ones. In addition, the idea is also to directly refer to you new projects which fit well with Balancer protocol’s functionalities.

2 Likes
8

I think you make a good point, that a 100K budget could be more impactful if deployed directly toward initiatives that the DAO believes would support the growth of Balancer on Polygon

2 Likes
9

@Mkflow27 @immutbl.
I understand that this is a possible friction point. That’s why we want to create “verticals”, ie a dedicated channel only for grants that favor the Balancer Protocol on Polygon. In this way you would be sure to spend funding which will favor your project.

The DApps Council would be nevertheless important as it would create a strong infrastracture for the selection of candidates and the establishment of credibility and reputation from the very beginning. As said, the idea is granting the maximum visibility on Polygon and connect projects which present several sinergies! Would this, at least partially, solve your doubts?

2 Likes
10

Its so great to see DAO to DAO partnerships finally becoming reality with such proposals. Major strategic move by Polygon DAO

3 Likes
11

BAL frens, an interesting up-date.

The Polygon Ecosystem DAO will also start a liquidity mining program and the DApps Council will have an active role in deciding how to distribute incentives. We are working on a final plan which should be ready next week.

For a general view, please read this post:

3 Likes
12

Interesting. Who would be in charge of making these grant decisions? If the plan is to ensure that funding allocation favors Balancer, Balancer DAO contributors should be involved in making these decisions, since they are most knowledgeable in making such determinations. The grants subDAO exists for this exact purpose.

I’d be more excited if it were a vertically-focused joint fund that is seeded 50/50 by Balancer DAO and Polygon DAO, with grant decisions jointly made by a committee represented by both sides.

2 Likes
13

Thank you very much for this comment. The intent of the Polygon Ecosystem DAO is not only to work on grants but also to create a joint governance concerning DeFi liquidity.

As to grants, we can create a dedicated BAL grants line where Balancer will have the final say on the grants to be awarded.

Moreover, we plan to set up an architecture for our treasury in which Balancer will play one of the major roles. One member of the Balancer team can be immediately involved in the works of the restricted governance team.

Please DM me on telegram for any further information: @eaglelex

1 Like
14

Totally agree with you point here!

15

This sounds promising but this structuring would need more clarity keeping a long term collaboration in view.