[BIP-695] Fund OpCo Product team - Oct - Mar

Service Providers Funding Proposals
1

Payload with PR

Service Provider Name: Balancer OpCo (Product Team)

Core Contributor(s): Gareth, Alberto, Anastas & Pon

Pledge to abide by [BIP-629] Balancer DAO Service Provider & Grantee Standards: Yes

Introduction

Balancer OpCo Limited (or the “Balancer OpCo”) is a wholly-owned operating subsidiary of the Balancer Foundation. It is an integral element of the Balancer Foundation corporate structure supporting the Balancer DAO. It serves two primary functions (1) Administrative and Operational; and (2) Product Development.

Since the passing of BIP-55 and its subsequent extension (BIP-351, BIP-565), the Balancer OpCo product development team has been a core team in the DAO since July 2022. This proposal aims to extend the product development services for an additional 6 months (October 1, 2024 - March 31, 2025). As in the previous proposal, the administrative and operational elements provided by Balancer OpCo are submitted as a separate proposal.

Our primary roles include Frontend Team Lead (Gareth), Frontend Core Engineers (Anastas and Alberto), and Product Designer (Pon).

Balancer OpCo is requesting $333,325 and 1,875 BAL for 6 months of funding.

Retrospective

Balancer OpCo product team was previously funded (BIP-565) for 6 months from April 1st, 2024 through September 30th, 2024.

Our high-level goals stated in the previous proposal are as follows:

  • Increase LP engagement and satisfaction.
  • Increase veBAL adoption and holder engagement.
  • Increase awareness and adoption of the Balancer protocol.

These goals have not changed and will continue to guide our focus as we build out v3 of the Balancer canonical app.

Our primary focus in the previous funding cycle was to build and launch the v3 app which we called Project Zen (or the Zen UI). The Zen UI was launched on the 18th of July (4 months into our funding cycle) and was generally considered a great success for the ecosystem.

In the build-out of the Zen UI we engaged the community through the Zentestooor initiative in Discord. A big shout-out is due to Tritium for the work he did to help us get this initiative off the ground and operational. Zentestooors found many bugs and suggested great improvements that were implemented before the launch. It undoubtedly contributed to the successful launch of the new app.

Three weeks after launching the new UI we also launched support for CoW AMM, another resounding success for the ecosystem. The quick turnaround from launching the UI to adding support for an entirely different underlying AMM is a testament to the architectural decisions we have made building the new app. It puts us in a great position to support v3 and any other AMM variant opportunities that develop within the ecosystem.

Objectives

Objective 1: Support the launch of the Balancer v3 protocol

Team: Alberto, Pon, Gareth

Summary:
The next big launch date for the Balancer ecosystem will be the v3 protocol launch. For this, the UI will need to seamlessly support v3 pools and promote them in an effective way. That is, the UI will need to support adding liquidity to v3 pools, which requires Permit2 approvals integration. It will also require work to ensure removing liquidity, staking and unstaking work seamlessly with v3 pools. Finally, we will ensure that v3 pools are findable, distinguishable from v2 pools and promoted effectively to support the ecosystem with the growth of the v3 protocol.

Key results:

  1. The UI accurately displays pool information for v3 pools.
  2. The UI supports Permit2 approvals for adding liquidity to v3 pools.
  3. The UI supports adding, removing, staking and unstaking of v3 liquidity.
  4. The UI makes it easy to find and distinguish v3 pools.

Timeline:
The launch of the v3 protocol is currently unknown so it is impossible for us to accurately say when the key results will be achieved. However, we have already started work on Permit2 support and our goal is to be ready to go live as soon as the protocol is ready.

Objective 2: New veBAL experience

Team: Pon, Gareth, Anastas & Alberto

Summary:
veBAL features were deliberately left out of the launch of the new UI (we currently link back to the v2 UI if a user needs to manage their veBAL or vote on gauges etc). This is because veBAL is a huge feature, almost an app in itself. We also recognised that there is a lot we can do better with the veBAL experience to better promote ownership and engagement. So instead of delaying the launch of the new app, it made sense to leave implementation for post-launch.

The new veBAL experience is currently being designed and the majority of implementation will happen in this next funding cycle. The objective for this new experience is to more effectively promote and support the benefits of owning veBAL, including the acknowledgement and integration of incentive markets such as HiddenHand.

Essentially, we want to take learnings from the existing veBAL experience in v2 and community tools for leveraging incentive markets and build a new and improved experience that maximises veBAL utility for holders.

Key results:

  1. A veBAL management UI where users can lock, extend and unlock/withdraw their veBAL.
  2. A veBAL syncing UI where users can sync their veBAL balances to secondary networks.
  3. A veBAL voting UI where users can see all the available gauges that can be voted on, their current votes, their estimated weekly incentives for their votes, and a vote optimizer. The vote optimizer should use incentive market data to find the maximum return for a user’s voting power.

Timeline:
As with all large scopes of work, it’s difficult to estimate precise delivery timelines. The design work for each key result is already underway. Some initial development work has been started for (1) and (2). At the time of writing, we estimate that a complete veBAL experience might be live by the end of the year or early next year.

Objective 3: Deprecate v2 UI & supporting infrastructure

Team: Gareth

Summary:
Now that the new UI is live and supporting core pool actions, swapping and reward claiming, we must continue to migrate and shut down the remaining logic in the v2 UI. Deprecating the remainder of the v2 app will allow us to shut down the v2 API, which will reduce the ecosystem’s infrastructure costs.

Key results:

  1. Shut down the veBAL experience in v2 UI, possible when Objective 2 is complete.
  2. Shut down claiming, portfolio and swap pages in the v2 UI.
  3. Turn off the v2 API.

Timeline:
The target is to shut down the v2 API (and therefore the UI) by the end of the year.

Objective 4: Frontend monorepo

Team: Gareth, Alberto & Anastas

Summary:
The frontend team would like to start to restructure our work such that we can share and build tooling more easily with the wider community, within Balancer and DeFi more generally. In practice, this means converting our core repository to a monorepo and extracting useful logic into packages.

Key results:

  1. A functional monorepo that contains the v3 frontend app.
  2. A package that exposes some useful functionality currently contained within the v3 app.

Timeline:
This is a secondary objective so we will not set hard deadlines. Rather, we aim to do this at some point within the next funding cycle.

Ongoing commitments

The Product Development team ensures Balancer has a high-quality UI/UX available everywhere that allows users to interact easily with the Balancer protocol. In addition, the UI serves as a branding tool where people can better understand what the Balancer Protocol allows. The team will:

  • Build, Improve and Optimize the canonical UI for interacting with Balancer
    • We aim to provide the best possible experience for users to provide liquidity, swap, lock veBAL, vote on gauges, and claim earnings using Balancer.
    • We will design, build and maintain the marketing pages for the Balancer protocol. The primary aim of these pages will be to inspire and help onboard potential partners into the ecosystem.
    • We ensure this UI works across all modern devices including desktop and mobile browsers.
    • We will continually optimize and improve this app so users have a great experience no matter how many features or how much data Balancer introduces in the future.
    • We will continually work on the stability and reliability of the UI by covering its critical functionality with unit and integration tests.
    • Whenever new features or improvements are made to the Balancer smart contracts we will implement the primary UI for users to interact with them on launch.
    • This also includes responsibility for all copywriting across the app.
  • Ecosystem design support
    • We will support broader ecosystem design initiatives. For example, we’ll collaborate with marketing on creative direction and occasional asset production.
  • Support the development and maintenance of the shared Beets/Balancer API
    • The Product Development team currently maintains the Balancer API at https://api.balancer.fi, which provides quick access to Balancer pool and token information.
    • The existing API mentioned above will be deprecated in favour of the shared Beets/Balancer API at https://api-v3.balancer.fi.
  • User support
    • We will monitor relevant channels in Discord, Slack and Github issues for any reported problems and aim to respond within 24 hours and fix the problem as soon as possible.
  • OpCo operations
    • Manage DNS for all Balancer DAO domains.
    • Manage 3rd party accounts, upgrades, renegotiations, etc. For example, RPC providers, AWS, and wallet check providers.

Github repositories that we are directly responsible for:

Github repositories we are not directly responsible for but occasionally contribute to:

In summary, Balancer OpCo’s product team is committed to building a market-leading DApp for the Balancer protocol and supporting growth opportunities through UI development as they arise. The product team are passionate about Balancer and committed to its long-term success.

Reporting

The Product Development team is committed to transparency and openness in all our work. The majority of our day-to-day activities can be followed via the previously mentioned repositories. We are also committed to providing higher-level reporting on our work in the relevant calls and on the forum. Our reporting commitments will be as follows:

  • Weekly v3 roadmap call
    • Audience: Internal, engineering and ecosystem leadership.
    • Here we share status updates on our latest work and take note of any urgent requirements or future work for our team.
  • Monthly forum update
    • Audience: Public
    • A high-level written report of work done over the past 30 days, including how that work relates to our stated goals. We will also include reflections on challenges that may be standing in the way of progress on those goals.
    • Relevant metrics that the Product Development team’s work has a direct impact on.
  • Quarterly community call update (if applicable)
    • Audience: Public
    • A higher-level update on the work done over the last quarter and work planned for the next quarter, including KPIs and visual content if relevant. This update will also include reflections on the team and its performance and any changes to the overall direction described in this funding proposal or previous quarterly reports.

Length of Engagement & Budget

Balancer OpCo is requesting $333,325 for 6 months of funding, starting October 1, 2024 and ending March 31, 2025.

The table below shows the applicable expense categories by quarter.

1032×545 41.3 KB

A further breakdown of the Balancer OpCo Product Team costs is shown below:

1227×478 46.7 KB

In addition, the Balancer OpCo is requesting an allocation of 1,875 BAL for the 6 month period of the proposal that aligns with the grants included in staff employment packages. This ongoing BAL grant is being awarded to current team members on a 4-year vesting basis, with a 1-year cliff, starting from each employee’s initial employment date in the ecosystem.

Should any of these employees leave before the completion of the 2-quarter proposal period, any unvested BAL would not go to the departing employee and would be available to the OpCo for allocation as incentives to potential replacement staff.

Link to Service Provider Agreement (if going through the Balancer OpCo):

Not applicable given this entity is internal. The Product team will be directly accountable to the Balancer OpCo and the Balancer DAO community through the reporting process applicable to all Balancer SPs, primarily with reference to the objectives and KPIs noted above.

Technical Specification

The Balancer DAO multisig 0x10A19e7eE7d7F8a52822f6817de8ea18204F2e4f will interact with USDC 0xA0b86991c6218b36c1d19D4a2e9Eb0cE3606eB48 by writing transfer passing the Foundation/OpCo wallet 0x3B8910F378034FD6E103Df958863e5c684072693 as recipient and amount 333,325 USDC as 333325000000.

No BAL transfers are required at this time.

7 Likes
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From an SP <> SP perspective dealing with OpCo is a pleasure. The team is incredibly efficient and flexible to meet partner requests/expectations. The frontend has never looked better and the testing phase was a great testament to their diligence and interest in community feedback. Great team, quality work.

6 Likes
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Great job, guys, and great work by all the beta testers as well!

3 Likes
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https://snapshot.org/#/balancer.eth/proposal/0x6e655d8f44bf5d8ef9099e981e071d396b21bc3f5b023c1cf416d37b3086c766