Balancer Grants SP has continued to accept grant applications through May for Wave 12. This wave is aimed at supporting teams who are building on Balancer V3, our new improved architecture currently in development. V3 promises simplified integrations while continuing the flexibility of custom pool development to create whatever you can dream up in the AMM space. This wave will last until end of June 2024 and has a budget of 75k BAL to distribute to Balancer Grantees.
This wave has seen completion of 3 grants. One by the Protofire team developing a feature for the V3 codebase, a buy bot by Bleu and the first installment of Scaffold Balancer. More about these below.
We have awarded 2 more grants this month, one being the Balancer pool Buy Bot and the second a research project into dynamic fees as a LVR mitigation strategy. More on these below.
As a reminder, if you have a good idea and are interested in supporting the development of the Balancer Ecosystem or want to build on top of the Balancer Protocol, this is your chance! Get started by filling in the Grants Application form. You can also check out our RFP page for inspiration! We also have an application guide for what we’re looking for in a grant submission here.
How have the grantees been building over May? Let’s find out below!
Grant Achievements
After receiving 23 official applications, we have approved 5 grants for a total of 34,113 BAL. Note these are only the numbers for official applications and does not include other calls, discussions and proposals that come outside of the application portal.
Finalized Grants
- Buidl Guidl — Scaffold Balancer | Wave 9
The team from the Buidl Guidl have successfully delivered the first installment of Scaffold Balancer built on the V3 codebase. A temporary deployment is available to demo the FE and has been released to partners building custom pools on Balancer V3. The second Milestone is being scoped up as V3 reaches its code complete status to add support for the latest changes.
The real success of this grant is that one of the devs who delivered Scaffold Balancer has now been onboarded into Balancer to support the SDK and integrations team. Dream result for a grantee to join the Balancer team after showing real expertise and value.
- Bleu — Balancer Buy Bot | Wave 12
Balancer now has a working Buy Bot that supports Balancer pools and all the chains where we are deployed. This tool will assist projects to increase awareness of their token sales by automatically sharing transactions with their community groups on Telegram. The Bleu team build for this bot and will continue to host with the potential for future expansion.
This has been added to the Tools Hub page and available publicly. The bot was scoped by the grants committee and a known team sourced to deliver.
New Grantees
- Dynamic Fee Research — Wave 12
The team from Eridani have been awarded a grant to research methods for adjusting dynamic fees to combat LVR in Balancer pools. The grant will conduct research on optimal dynamic AMM fee algorithms for different Balancer pools. The goal of the grant is to simulate and analyze different dynamic fee algorithm alternatives that could be used to redistribute LVR to LPs.
This has been a long standing RFP and the Eridani team is the first to propose a suitable academic approach that we are comfortable awarding this research to. If this research produces high quality outcomes, it has the potential to be extended.
Grantee Updates — Building
The program is proud to present our grantees and their updates in alphabetic order:
- Opal Finance — Wave 11
Opal Finance are building Omnipools on Balancer that allow for exposure across multiple Balancer pools for a single token. The allocation of liquidity is controlled by Opal governance through gauge votes defining the share of an Omnipool’s total liquidity that should be supplied to each underlying pool. The grant is covering Cantina audits to supplement those undertaken by Halborn Security. The first Cantina audit has been completed and the team is in the development phase for Gyro pool integration and L2 expansion.
- Mode Accelerator Prizes — Wave 12
In partnership with Mode launching their Yield Accelerator program, Balancer Grants has offered up $10k in BAL for prizes to be awarded to projects building on Balancer on Mode. The Mode Yield Accelerator has been setup with $10m to fund projects across DeFi, Restaking, CultureFi, AI and Infrastructure, with this program running until June 2024. Balancer will be judging projects built on our protocol and awarding prizes accordingly. For more information see the official Mirror post.
Yet to be announced:
In addition to these, we have two grantees working on adding new functionality to the V3 codebase that will be shared upon V3 being made public. You’ll have to wait until this feature is live before we can share more details. Stay tuned!
Another grantee approved this wave is a partner creating innovative products to be built and launched on V3. We’re keeping this project under-wraps while development continues so look out for this one as well.
Grant Initiatives
The grants team has also been working on:
- Co-funding program with Polygon zkEVM
- Approaching existing teams to port to V3
- Created docs page for new buy bot
- Scoping new RFPs
- Planning V3 specific funding projects upon code release
Grants Program Expenses
About Balancer Grants
The BAL Grant program is one way Balancer DAO promotes the development of the Balancer Protocol and Ecosystem.
The BAL Grant program provides support and funding ($1K — $100K) to projects committed to supporting Balancer Protocol in achieving its mission to become the number one source for Decentralized exchange trades. This program is a good fit for individuals and groups that want to run a project that builds technology or resources on the Balancer Protocol.
We have a community powered Tools Hub and RFPs but we will always be open to new and unique ideas of how to improve and expand on Balancer’s flexible tech.
Wave 12 Grants continues. Apply now!
If you are interested in supporting the development of the Balancer Ecosystem or want to build on top of the Balancer Protocol, this is your chance! Get started by filling in the Grants Application form. You can also check out our RFP page for inspiration! We also have an application guide for what we’re looking for in a grant submission here.
For further questions about how the Grants SP works, check out the grants page, follow us on Twitter, or send an email to grants@balancer.community.