PR with Payload
Service Provider Name: Beethoven X DAO
Core Contributor(s): franz, groninge, daniel
Pledge to abide by [BIP-629] Balancer DAO Service Provider & Grantee Standards: Yes
Introduction Domains of Operation:
Since the passing of BIP-254 and it’s subsequent extension (BIP-393, BIP-394, BIP-518, BIP-631), the Beethoven X DAO has functioned as a Balancer Service Provider since May 1, 2023. This proposal aims to extend the technical services and advisory component for an additional 6 months (January 1, 2025 - June 30, 2025). As in the previous proposals, marketing services provided by the Beethoven X DAO are submitted as a separate proposal. Our primary roles include API team lead (franzns), frontend contributor (groninge) and ecosystem technical lead (daniel). Additionally, we’d like to apologize for the delay in posting this proposal. The launch of v3 took precedence and we were unable to allocate enough time and resource to prepare our proposal before the end of year cut-off.
As we operate as a small part of a much larger system, our successes are enabled by many across the ecosystem. As such, we present a broad technical ecosystem update below that touches on our specific contributions when relevant. We welcome community feedback.
Off-chain Infrastructure (Subgraph / SDK / UI / API)
The release of the Zen UI, the launch of CoW AMM, and the official launch of Balancer v3—all within the past 6 months—has showcased just how far Balancer’s off-chain infrastructure has come. Leveraging years of collective experience, we’ve spent the last 18 months systematically identifying key bottle necks across the entire off-chain stack, iterating, refactoring, and rebuilding where necessary. It is because of this foundational effort that we are positioned and ready to scale as v3 gains market adoption, attracts builders, and new types of AMMs emerge.
Below, we present a highlight list of some of the bigger milestones and interesting initiatives from the last six months:
- Zen UI - The Zen UI has redefined the Balancer user experience, receiving significant praise across the broader DeFI ecosystem. It is multi-chain native, blazing fast, beautifully designed offering an intuitive UX, built to be version and pool type agnostic, partner themeable and Aura aware.
- SDK - With the b-sdk now feature-complete for both v2 and v3, the balancer-sdk was officially deprecated in November 2024. The b-sdk is significantly simpler than its predecessor, with it’s primary goal being to facilitate on-chain interactions with the Balancer Protocol. Data intensive operations are now delegated to the Balancer API. We expect the b-sdk to have significantly reduced maintenance requirements, ensuring that the SDK team will have ample time to manage new pool type integrations and transition a significant amount of energy into supporting developer teams as they build on top of and integrate against balancer v3.
- Subgraph - The simplicity of the v3 subgraph is it’s defining feature. What was once a monolith of business and pricing logic has transitioned to a simple data extraction and indexing layer, making it less error prone and significantly easier to maintain. This transition has removed the largest bottleneck in our data pipeline and has freed up the data team to work on high value initiatives across the ecosystem.
- API - With the release of the Zen UI, the API became the defacto data layer for all Balancer applications. It stitches together data from disparate sources both internal and external, providing rich, simple and easy to parse data models. Considering the breadth of integrations managed by the API, we have seen very few issues, zero down time and consistent infrastructure cost reductions.
A hugely positive side effect of the reduced complexity across our tech stack is that we are able to free up resource to work on high value initiatives:
- Prototyping - An idea initially proposed by @zendragon, John Grant led the first implementation of the StableSurgeHook, a hook that we’re looking to launch in early Q1 2024. Additionally, he tested a design pattern for applying non-fungible metadata to balancer positions combining Custom Routers with Hooks.
- Volume hit squad - Volume will be a key metric by which the success of v3 is measured. @mendesfabio and John have formed a sub-team with the core focus of meaningfully improving Balancer’s volume and ensuring products built on Balancer are integrated into the aggregator and solver ecosystem.
CoW AMM
Launched in August 2024, CoW AMM represents a significant innovation for the Balancer ecosystem. Developed in collaboration with CoW Swap and implemented by Wonderland, it stands as the first MEV-capturing AMM in the market. CoW AMMs protects LPs from LVR so they can provide liquidity with less risk and higher return. By leveraging the CoW Swap solver network, CoW AMMs overcome the common cold start problem faced by novel AMMs, ensuring immediate trading volume from day one. Its direct integration into the Balancer Zen UI provides users with a fast, reliable, and familiar user experience, showcasing the value proposition of building on Balancer.
As of Jan 2025, CoW AMMs are live on 4 networks (mainnet, gnosis, base, arbitrum), boast over $25 million in TVL and have captured over $75 million in volume. With CoW AMMs capturing mind share, they have reignited the narrative of innovation being built on Balancer, attracting more developers and users to the ecosystem.
Balancer v3
After more than 18 months of dedicated effort across the entire ecosystem, v3 officially launched on December 11th. With a 10x improvement to Custom Pool DX, native support for yield-bearing tokens, 100% Boosted Pools, and re-entrant pool lifecycle hooks enabling unprecedented flexibility, Balancer is set to solidify its role as the go-to base layer for custom pool innovation, fuelling the next generation of AMM design and driving the evolution of the on-chain economy.
While the list is long and the contributions many, we highlight a few of the larger technical milestones achieved during the last six months below:
- Public code release in July, along with docs and technical article describing the core features and improvements for v3
- The v3 contracts were audited by three separate audit firms, funded entirely by Balancer Labs. All audit reports are available in the v3-monorepo.
- The DAO funded the prize pool for a public Cantina competition starting in November
- The Grants committee organized and executed on the Balancer v3 Hookathon, driving significant community engagement which resulted in over 30 submissions.
- The first aggregators launched support for v3 just days after it’s official launch
As a truly decentralized organization with multiple independent service providers collaborating to drive innovation and advance the Balancer protocol, the successful launch of v3 demonstrates the potential of the DAO working model. It has been an honor to collaborate with a team of dedicated experts across various technical and non-technical verticals in our collective efforts to bring v3 to market.
Key Objectives & Success Metrics:
With the successful launch of Balancer v3, we’d propose the following key objectives to guide technical resource allocation over the next two quarters:
- Support our partners - As Fernando has said before: Balancer’s long-term success is intrinsically linked to the success of the protocols and products built on our platform. With v3 active development now wrapped, we as the technical teams within the balancer ecosystem need to shift our focus outwards, towards our partners. While several technical leads already do a great job engaging with partners, there is scope to increase participation across all teams. Over the next two quarters, we should cultivate an environment where individual contributors feel empowered and capable of assisting partners within their domain of expertise.
- Build on v3 - We believe the fastest path to building an engaged developer community around v3 will be to lead by example. We should continue to identify novel and interesting use cases and showcase how easy it is to build them on v3. The prototyping work kickstarted by John is a perfect example of this effort and something we double down on over the next two quarters.
- Work to get v3 integrated, wherever possible - Balancer’s flexibility, while powerful, has historically posed integration challenges. While v3 incorporates simple interfaces leveraging standard conventions wherever possible, there will undoubtedly be hurdles for integrators. For v3 to be successful, we must prioritize integrations, balancer’s v3 liquidity needs to be accessible in all major venues. Initiatives like the volume hit squad are a great step in the right direction, but collectively we can still do more.
Length of Engagement & Budget:
Beethoven X DAO is requesting 6 months of funding starting January 1, 2024 and ending June 30, 2024.
We request to extend the existing budget of 29,000 USDC per month for technical development and advisory.
In total our USDC cost basis breakdown looks as follows for 3 FTE:
| Position | Cost Basis |
|---|---|
| $ / FTE / month (USDC) | $9,666.67 |
ETH Address to Receive Funds: 0x811912c19eEF91b9Dc3cA52fc426590cFB84FC86
