[Feedback] Using Balancer Flash Loans for Atomic De-leveraging on Base

General Chat
1

Hi everyone,

I’m a smart contract developer building on the Base network. I recently completed an integration using the Balancer Vault and wanted to share the architecture with the community here to get some technical feedback, especially as I start looking toward Balancer v3.

I’ve been building a non-custodial smart vault factory (Pivot Bot) that interacts with lending markets like Moonwell. One of the biggest challenges was creating a gas-efficient, single-transaction “emergency exit” to save users from liquidations during market dumps.

Balancer’s 0% fee Flash Loans turned out to be the exact primitive needed to make the math work for retail users.

The Technical Flow we implemented:

  1. The user’s individual smart vault requests a WETH/USDC Flash Loan directly from the Balancer Vault.

  2. The borrowed assets are used to instantly repay the user’s debt on Moonwell.

  3. The underlying collateral is unlocked and withdrawn.

  4. The collateral is swapped (via Aerodrome routing) to cover the flash loan principal.

  5. The flash loan is repaid to the Balancer Vault, and the remaining safe collateral stays in the user’s contract.

Because Balancer does not charge a fee on flash loans, this entire atomic sequence can be executed without bleeding the user’s capital, which is critical when they are already facing liquidation thresholds. We also use this same flash loan architecture in reverse to allow users to build yield-bearing loop positions in a single transaction.

Feedback Request: I am sharing this here primarily to connect with other devs who have built heavily on top of the Balancer Vault.

  • Are there any gas-optimization best practices when calling the flashLoan function on Base that I might be missing?

  • As we look at the roadmap, are there major architectural changes regarding flash loans in Balancer v3 that I should be preparing my factory contracts for now?

If anyone is curious to see the code execution or how the UI abstracts this for the user, I put together a technical breakdown of the smart contracts here: [Technical YouTube Video]

I would appreciate any critique or advice from the core team or other ecosystem builders.

Thanks!