Dear Balancer community,
As part of our commitment to accountability, transparency and open communication, we’re pleased to share another update with the Balancer community. This report details our progress since mid-Q3 and outlines our ongoing efforts to support the protocol.
1. Liaising with the board on budgets, project proposals, and matters particularly as it relates to service providers including the BVI subsidiary
As part of this role, reporting to the board is being done in a timely manner on all matters of importance including financial status, funding projections, program operations, employee matters. Also management has been providing adequate materials and analysis to assist the board in making decisions on all matters of importance. In addition, this liaison role has been extended to include the Ecosystem Council, so as to have buy-in from all service providers on different aspects of the organization.
2. Manage Finances and Service Providers
Alongside @Lemma and @karpatkey, we have been working to provide the most transparent reports for OpCo, so that the Balancer community can follow not only the on-chain operations of the DAO/OpCo, but also its off-chain expenses.
- Every on-chain transaction is pre-approved by the Balancer Foundation board (¾ multisig)
- All the off-chain payments are overseen by the board and @Lemma
- With @karpatkey being onboarded and signed, we also share bank statements and bookkeeping with another SP for cross-referencing and sanity checks
Following the Year 2 transparency report published by Lemma, we now endeavor to work on quarterly reports of the bookkeeping, but the community will have monthly updates throughout the year with Karpartkey.
In addition,we followed another big funding round at the end of Q3 and the Balancer Foundation proposed an update to our SP Standard. With the buy-in from all active (renewing) DAO service providers, now focusing on the OKR approach and financial reports to the periodic updates, we are certain to enhance transparency and decentralization even further.
3. Compliance and Risk Management
MiCA compliance is an issue to track as the product and community develops; however, as of now, EU counselors affirmed that the risks are low and can be managed without material cost or change to regulatory status and the Ecosystem Council has been instructed to act accordingly. This issue, as well as other regulatory developments, are topics to follow and continue to assess for impact.
To further enhance decentralization and protocol adoption through access to its liquid token BAL, the Balancer OpCo on behalf of the DAO, has engaged with a market maker and has been constantly monitoring market depth in central exchanges. We are also monitoring veBAL participation, to ensure a plural environment of stakeholders.
Source: @Balancer veBAL Dune Dashboards, thanks @viniabussafi1
4. Community Engagement
4.1 Devcon 7 ONsite
OpCo has been working directly with DAO contributors to make sure we can have a huge Balancer presence at Devcon 7 (Bangkok) this year. By choosing to directly engage with the contributors, we have reduced the overhead of a travel agent and reduced costs for this ONsite significantly. Although this edition may be almost entirely focused on Devcon and v3 launch, there’s a lot of planning and organization happening in the backstage to make sure everything runs smoothly.
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All attendees have secured flights, entry tickets and accommodations.
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We have crunched the numbers a bit, to make sure we fit yet more relevant contributors to the party (15 now), while Balancer Labs also works on bringing more staff of their own (6).
The Balancer protocol will undoubtedly have a huge presence at Devcon this year, and it will cause an impression alongside its partners! Hopefully it will be an opportunity for all of our contributors to grow and engage with the broader Ethereum community, but also a big v3 celebration!
4.2 Ballers
4.2.1 Discord Activity
Our Discord has seen a lot of activity these past few weeks and it’s been on fire! We even updated the artwork with new zen aesthetics (thanks @danimim, @vee and @xeonus).
Looking back to these past 3 months, we are super happy to have onboarded new Ballers to support our community. Especially with the launch of the zen UI, and the recent Galxe quests, they have proven their worth and earned their stripes. User activation was higher than usual, and retention above 20% benchmark.
4.2.2 Hookathon
The Ballers have also been very helpful at the Balancer v3 Hookathon organized by the Grants committee by brainstorming, planning and supporting users with V3 Hookathon Resources on our Notion webpage. Kudos to all of us in the Balancer ecosystem: the hookathon is indeed one of the most exciting milestones for us anticipating v3.
4.2.3 Ecosystem Hub
Speaking of Notion, the Ecosystem Hub page (for internal use) was also revamped, facilitating communication and interaction between contributors from different SPs.
4.2.4 Balancer in the wild
During the past few weeks, we indexed several websites and main hubs (like Coingecko, CoinMarketCap, etc) to update all information related to Balancer, making sure our reach and message is well spoken across the crypto industry, while also reducing issues related to outdated informations and links.
4.2.5 The Balancer Report and Anti-Scam Initiative
The weekly newsletter The Balancer Report is being posted every Monday, and the Anti-Scam Initiative flagship efforts against scam activities within the Balancer ecosystem and monitors malicious websites and links in the wild.
5. What’s next?
Please expect the financial analysis for Q3 dropping in due time, and data metrics regarding our ticket system and user support (Discord).
