The BAL for Gas budget is nearly exhausted and needs to be replenished in order for the program to continue beyond this week.
The Proposal
Add 50,000 BAL from the Ecosystem Fund to the BAL for Gas budget. For reference on the mechanics of the ongoing campaign, please consult the original proposal which was approved by governance five weeks ago. In summary, the campaign’s budget is used to distribute BAL tokens to traders on the Balancer Exchange as a subsidy for Ethereum network gas costs. It is consumed on a first-come, first-served basis, and will most likely be depleted within the next few days unless this proposal is approved to replenish.
Motivation
The Ethereum network has been quite congested for the last several months as the DeFi ecosystem continues to flourish. As an unfortunate result of this increased demand, transaction costs are often prohibitive for the average user. The Balancer community strives to cultivate a protocol that is welcoming to all - not only to whales - and so it has been utilizing its sizeable treasury to help reduce the overall costs of protocol usage.
The BAL for Gas campaign also serves as a mechanism for distributing Balancer protocol governance power to one of its widest user bases: traders. The liquidity mining program has been distributing BAL tokens to liquidity providers for almost a year (45 weeks!), but only with the recent launch of BAL for Gas did traders become eligible as well. In the time since the initial pilot, 43,019 BAL tokens have been distributed to 20,749 unique addresses. Of those recipients, 18,970 (91%) did not hold any BAL prior to the start of the program!
Though the campaign has already been live for several weeks, recent traction on Twitter and new advertisements in podcasts/newsletters suggest that visibility is only just beginning. These distribution numbers should continue to grow in the weeks ahead and provide a deeper window into the lasting effects (or lack thereof) of the program.