[BIP-67] Enable rETH/RPL Gauge [Ethereum]

Gauge Proposal Template:

Summary:

This pool uses the new weighted pool factory which allows Balancer to apply the protocol fee to rETH’s yield. This gauge would be introduced as a “core pool” under BIP-19, meaning protocol fees earned by this pool would be used to bribe for votes on it. In addition, any RPL collected by the ProtocolFeeCollector would also be directed towards bribing on this pool. We currently have ~$60k RPL in the fee collector which Balancer can use to bootstrap initial TVL, thus kick starting the flywheel here. It is also likely that Rocket Pool will assist with some incentives on their side. This gauge is enterring without a cap.

References/Useful links:

Link to:
Website
Documentation
Github Page
Communities

Protocol Description:

rETH represents liquid staked ETH. RPL is the governance token for Rocket Pool.

Motivation:

Balancer’s near term focus is increasing TVL of yield bearing assets like RPL. With the new weighted pool factory we have the opportunity to also stimulate more trading activity in these yield bearing tokens. Given Rocket Pool has begun heavily bribing for rETH pools and Balancer aims to support the expansion of rETH, it is natural that we should attempt to secure more trading of RPL. Currently we will only be competing with uni-v3 so I expect interest and uptake to be strong here.

Specifications:

  1. Governance: Please see this guide which outlines Rocket Pool’s DAO structure.

  2. Oracles: This pool will rely on a rate provider which has been in use for the rETH/ETH pool for some time. You can see it here.

  3. Audits: See here.

  4. Centralization vectors: Rocket Pool is a protocol for decentralized and trustless ETH2 staking.

  5. Market History: See coingecko page.

  6. Value: Balancer will soon be the top destination for rETH liquidity on Ethereum if we aren’t already. In order to boost our protocol revenue from this liquidity we need to stimulate rETH trading activity. RPL being the governance token of rETH seems a natural first step for a non-correlated pairing. RPL has seen significant trading interest going into the merge and this would be the first incentivized RPL liquidity pool on Ethereum as far as I know.

Link to pool
Link to gauge: 0x6Eb7CdCd15417ABF120FfE404B9b88141Ca952B7

2 Likes

https://snapshot.org/#/balancer.eth/proposal/0xe56c129257275cc821b062672661698ff0e439cf74c855c5c084b4b0de443654

I support an rETH/RPL gauge for the reasons mentioned, but having a re-allocation of system revenue as a side-note to an otherwise standard gauge proposal should have more visibility. Given that there are 10 BIP’s up for vote this week, it’s tough to expect people to dig in to each proposal and think critically about them. This proposal would see a big chunk of existing/future system revenue sourced from other RPL pools directed from veBAL to core pools bribes, which is something material that should be highlighted in the proposal title and discussed IMO.

For reference, the original core pools proposal had the following:

“All fees earned by Ethereum core pools would be used as bribes on those pools (each pool gets its own fees as a bribe), after the DAO takes its 25%.
All fees earned by Ethereum non-core pools continue to be sent to veBAL and the DAO (75/25 split) as they are today.”

The RPL collected in this fee cycle is a one-off from a pool without a gauge. It was earned over the last four months. This presents an opportunity to use these funds to bootstrap a sustainable rETH/RPL gauge. If we believe RPL liquidity is valuable, as I do, this seems a far better use of $70k than giving it to passive veBAL and increasing bbaUSD yield for one week such a small amount no one cares.

But putting the specifics of this aside and speaking to the issue you raise, it comes down to the direction we’re going with core pools and everything. Feeding RPL or LDO into passive fees does not help us gain more RPL or LDO liquidity. Why do we want more RPL and LDO liquidity? There’s no competition, trading activity is very high on these two tokens, we are aligned as Balancer is pushing the usage of rETH and wstETH. This is an opportunity to show why projects should pair against rETH and wstETH and if we can become the main liquidity hub of these two tokens it should be very lucrative.

This is bad for passive veBAL in the short term but I’d argue good in the long term as we’re taking a tiny amount of their fees in order to secure valuable trading liquidity which will bring value to BAL token and thus increase the value of the BAL that will always go to passive veBAL and which already represents the vast majority of passive earnings.

If we don’t do this we have no mechanism for bootstrapping these two pools. Lido isn’t going to spend LDO to build our LDO liquidity and neither will Rocket Pool by themselves. Fair point that perhaps this needs a bigger discussion by the community, in which case I’m fine with the vote failing. But it is unfortunate we already triggered the collection of RPL fees which will be wasted and our opportunity lost. Life goes on though.

1 Like

Cool well thats all useful context, think it was worth sharing it all here for transparency. Happy to vote in favour personally just worth maybe having more clarifications on the proposal around how this additional RPL fee collection would be applied to other potential pools, if at all, to avoid adding complexity or encountering subjectiveness for the future.

3 Likes