Dear Balancer community,
One of the goals following [BIP-566] was to bring more transparency to the Foundation with regular updates accessible to the community. Here’s a brief report on what’s going on and the work we have been carrying out this epoch.
Since the appointment of the new manager/executive, the Foundation/OpCo has seen a significant improvement in its operations. The position now serves as a versatile link between the Balancer ecosystem and the board, facilitating efficient execution. The broad knowledge of the Balancer landscape and autonomy, allows for seamless navigation across all areas of the organization, ensuring optimal cost-saving functionality and productivity.
Three major endeavors are highlighted, namely closing Foundation/OpCo’s Year 2 accounting and providing a transparency report to the community; co-authoring the DAO’s financial report alongside @karpatkey; and onboarding Balancer to a market maker for BAL liquidity on exchanges.
- Foundation/OpCo Transparency Report accounting
- DAO Q2 2024 - Financial Performance Report
- [BIP-664] Engage with market makers to enhance BAL liquidity on central exchanges
Balancer OpCo has onboarded a number of partners for Balancer in the past few weeks. As the markets heated up, so did our bizdev team, collecting results from the prime work they’ve been doing. OpCo requires due diligence KYC’ing partners and signing commercial instruments, recurring to our GRC advisory when necessary.
We have also contracted with Provenance for third-party KYC/KYB and onboarding (screening for sanctions, etc) and renewed with Driftwood (compliance firm) for 2024/25
- Karparkey service agreement with the Foundation/OpCo (pending) following the approval of [BIP-648].
- Grant agreement following deployment on Mode ([BIP-589])
- Duca Labs following partnership agreement ([BIP-647]) - see details
- Wonderland termination
- KYC/KYB for Optimism Grants (Superfest and RPGF)
The community engagement is also seeing some action with the recent product launches, with new blood coming in and saying goodbye to valorous contributors. We fully onboarded karpatkey members and new Ballers, and bid farewell to our partnership with Wonderland and @CosmeFulanito.
We have also been actively working with Balancer Labs and Beethoven to plan irl event participation, accounting EthCC costs/refunds and looking forward to Devcon 7, in Bangkok (Nov 12-15).
- ONsite Bangkok:
- Attendance list
- Proposal draft
- Sourcing travel agents / event planners for Bangkok initial quotes
- Flights, accommodations, event tickets/discounts
- CosmeFulanito offboarding
- New Ballers onboarding:
- Blackbear: BadgerDAO, eBTC
- danimin.eth: Chainlink advocate, Blockful, irl speaker
- Weekly Newsletter - The Balancer Report
- Balancer Anti-scam Initiative - by @dubstard
- Evaluation of tools/bots with little staff interest and usage
Another small but very impactful improvement was getting a ticket system running on Discord (since June 1st). When we moved the Ballers as hired service providers under OpCo, it made sense to provide user assistance for the dapp and other first level issues with the protocol through a qualified support outlet. This also helped streamline communications between different SPs that provide user assistance, like the Maxis, Beethoven X, and Balancer Labs. More on these metrics 
…
Lastly, OpCo has been leading regulatory discussions alongside its internal counselor (Warburton), to provide some clarity on MICA. With the launch of v3/zenUI, we think the timing is perfect to reassess regulatory concerns around VASP/CASP implications and how MiCA may or may not affect BVI companies. In the next few weeks, GRC/OpCo will be giving the Eco-council (team leaders) the overview of these assessments made together with an EU firm, and inform governance accordingly.
It is our understanding, in consultation with our advisors, that Balancer OpCo Limited does not qualify as a (BVI) VASP under the exemption of “(b) providing service as a software developer or provider of unhosted wallets whose function is only to develop or sell software or hardware” but we are constantly monitoring guidance for registrations. Cayman/BVI has a thriving blockchain community, and we are confident it will remain a competitive jurisdiction for crypto.
