Integrations Team (Three Rocks) October 2023 Update

Service Providers
1

This update covers the period from September 20 to November 7, 2023.

The following dates should be considered non-working:

  • @rabmarut: September 25 - October 6 (vacation)
  • rest of team: October 2 - October 6 (ecosystem onsite event)

General Updates

After much consideration, it is time for me (@rabmarut) to permanently step away from the Balancer ecosystem. Regardless of whatever the rest of the Three Rocks Integrations Team chooses to do, I personally will not seek additional funding after the end of our current period (December 31). Though I originally contemplated a more immediate departure, I have decided to stay through the end of the year to mentor the remaining team members and help them find their permanent home(s) in the Balancer ecosystem.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the community for providing my entry-point into the DeFi industry during the early days of Balancer V1.

Completed Work

  • Code review
    • 7 completed rate provider reviews:
    • 1 completed miscellaneous review:
    • 2 ongoing rate provider reviews:
      • hordETH - initially ruled unsafe, may be rejudged pending contract upgrades.
      • weETH - source code ruled safe, full review pending deployment (our review scope includes on-chain configuration).
  • ERC-4626 Rate Provider Factory - Worked with a third-party dev to fix and merge a PR for a general-purpose ERC4626RateProvider. Factory deployment pending.
  • Next-gen Boosted Pools - We are working with the Smart Contracts team on the next version of Boosted Pool tech to replace the deprecated Linear Pools. This is still in very early stages, and we can’t say much about it for now.
  • BPT as Collateral
    • The Aave implementation is completed and has passed internal review on our end.
    • There is currently no risk appetite from Aave to support any LP tokens (Balancer, Uniswap, Curve) as collateral. Market conditions have shifted since this project was first ideated. It could still be picked up at a later date, but that seems unlikely for the time being.
    • The work that Three Rocks did on this implementation will be repurposed into a generalized BPT oracle that can be freely utilized by all integrators, unlocking a variety of markets for BPT collateral. This work is expected to be completed within the next few weeks, so keep an eye out for next month’s Community Update.
  • Balpy
    • Conducted a user interview to better understand usage patterns.
      • User is an active arbitrageur for whom the latest web3py version is important.
    • Ongoing PR work to upgrade balpy to web3py v6.
  • Tokemak - Helped resolve an audit finding related to pausing/recovery mode.
  • Mountain Protocol - Confirmed Batch Relayer compatibility with USDM/wUSDM and added (un)wrapping tests to the Batch Relayer deployment task.
  • Yearn - Clarified pricing mechanisms for their work with Gyroscope & Xave custom pools.
  • THX Network - Assisted with utilizing the Balancer SDK and clarified some questions around gauge reward mechanisms.
  • Gearbox - Wrote JoinPool Helper gist for ad-hoc joinPool requests.
  • QiDAO - Assisted with questions about the ve8020 system.
  • Protofire - Technical review of the ve8020 factory on behalf of Balancer Grants.
  • Sommelier Finance - Verified deployment parameters for their Stable Pool BPT oracle.
  • Pessimistic - Reviewed read-only reentrancy Slither plugin for usage in future code-reviews.
  • DeFi Safety - Worked to improve Balancer’s safety rating.
  • Ongoing Telegram support for many partner teams and third-party devs.

Strategy for Next Month

1. BPT as Collateral

As described above in Completed Work, we will shift focus towards a general-purpose BPT oracle that can be reused by many integrators. This will be adapted from work that was already completed for Aave, so we expect it to be ready in short order. The existence of this off-the-shelf solution will lighten the support load and ensure correctness for a plethora of BPT as Collateral projects.

2. Next-gen Boosted Pools

We still believe that boosted pools are a core differentiator for the Balancer tech stack when measured against other DEXs, but linear pools have been sunset following the recent vulnerability. So, we are heads-down working with the Balancer Labs Smart Contracts Team to design an even better version. This will require significant time expenditure but will be well worth it from our perspective.

3. GammaSwap Revenue Share

GammaSwap has been engaged with Grants to implement Balancer weighted pools within their protocol to give users access to their unique strategies that allow for lending and perpetual trading. However, due to the team’s current work load, they have been unable to finish this implementation and are interested in a deal that involves forgoing some of the grant fees and doing a revenue sharing deal with Balancer, if the Integrations Team can help complete their implementation. We are still waiting on some action items for the Gamma Swap team to complete before the next steps, but expect that sometime this month we will be able to progress on this project.

4 Likes