Wave Overview

The Balancer Grants program was established in August 2021 after a community discussion before evolving into a Service Provider beginning Wave 5 which we have continued on to now reach Wave 14. This Wave will run from October through to the end of December 2024 with 50k BAL available for new grantees (approved via BIP-705/snapshot). With a decreased budget, grants will be aimed at smaller projects and integrations, with larger requests being moved to the forum.

This wave has seen the completion of the v3 Hookathon (more below) and will include a retrospective report on the grants program to date with the intention of determining the way forward in 2025.

Grant Achievements

After receiving 30 applications, we have not approved a grant this month.

Balancer v3 Hookathon

One of the most exciting initiatives Balancer Grants has funded is a virtual Hookathon which has now finished on DoraHack.io. We extended the competition by 2 weeks which closed on Oct 20 and announced the winners Nov 31st during the Balancer office hours on Discord. We were blown away with the number and quality of submissions, those passing minimum criteria have been added to hooks.balancer.fi. The hookathon was a unique opportunity to experiment with the Balancer v3 hook infrastructure, collaborate with Balancer’s core developer team, build new and innovative liquidity features around existing AMMs, and win a share of a $17k prize pool. The winners are:

• 1st Prize — $7k USD in BAL VolatilityLoyaltyHook by @DilawariVagish https://dorahacks.io/buidl/17772 Boosts activity in Balancer pools, rewarding long-term holders with fee discounts and stabilizing swaps by raising fees in volatile periods. Well-documented, clean code, UI and demo
• 2nd Prize — $5k USD in BAL Prediction Market Hook by @shift0x0 https://dorahacks.io/buidl/17576/ This hook enables any registered Balancer pool to host prediction markets, letting users speculate on future price movements. Innovative concept with solid code, README and potential value.
• 3rd Prize — $3k USD in BAL MEV Tax Hook by @gerrrrrrrrrg https://dorahacks.io/buidl/17711 Lets Balancer pools capture their own MEV, charging a dynamic fee based on tx priority. Simple, effective, solid tests, vault interaction, clear demo. Great execution of a valuable concept
• Runner-Up — $1k USD in BAL Dynamic Fees and Reinvesting Hook by @protofire https://dorahacks.io/buidl/17706 A 2 in 1! Stabilizes liquidity pools with dynamic swap fees and rewards long-term liquidity providers with extra earnings. Great dual-feature design with clear presentation
• Wild Card — $1k USD in BAL Volatility Fee Hook by @touchey_phoenix https://dorahacks.io/buidl/16865 Dynamically adjusts pool swap fees with market volatility. Shoutout to the dev for outstanding engagement throughout the hookathon. Hope you and other builders keep getting involved!
• DoraHacks Hookathon Winners

This was an impressive turnout and we hope to repeat the success of this in future hackathons, ideally including some in-person workshops to foster even more collaboration. We will take learnings from this event to make the next one even better.

Grantee Updates — Building

The program is proud to present our grantees and their updates in alphabetic order:

• Opal Finance | Wave 11

Still on track for MS3 (integration of Gyroscope Concentrated Liquidity pools including Audit) to be delivered in December and the airdrop phase 1 distribution is ongoing. A good part of it has been claimed already.

Opal airdrop checker https://app.opaldefi.xyz/airdrop enabling community, governors and users to track their airdrop allocation

• QuantAMM — Protocol | Wave 12

Code has been pushed for MS1 for the conversion of QuantAMM to Balacer v3. This include the strategy runner (update weight runner conversion and any strategy (“rule”) class changes as well as the new root QuantAMM base pool) and the new uplift hook. MS2 (Development of vault admin/creation and non linear execution hooks) is nearing completion with the grant in its entirety matching the pending launch of Balancer v3.

• QuantAMM — Pool Simulator | Wave 13

The pool simulator has been reviewed with the Balancer team with launch planned shortly. Watch this space!

• Xave Finance — Porting FX pools v3 | Wave 13

1. Omega Parameter Implementation Complete: We’ve successfully finalized the Omega parameter implementation, moving from the research and planning phase we discussed last month to full completion. This marks a significant achievement in enhancing our FXPool’s fee structure and optimization capabilities within the Beta region.

2. Enhanced Testing Framework: We’ve expanded our testing protocols significantly, covering both:

- Comprehensive testing suite for the newly implemented Omega parameter
- Extended test coverage across the entire system to ensure robust integration

3. Audit Partner Secured: Following our previous discussions with potential auditors, we’re pleased to announce we’ve selected our audit partner. The audit is scheduled for completion in the first half of December.

Yet to be announced:

In addition to these, we have one grantee working on adding new functionality to the V3 codebase that will be shared once complete. You’ll have to wait until this feature is live before we can share more details. Stay tuned!

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 14 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 information about how the Grants SP works, check out the grants page, follow us on X, or send an email to grants@balancer.community.

Wave Overview

The Balancer Grants program was established in August 2021 after a community discussion before evolving into a Service Provider beginning Wave 5 which we have continued on to now complete Wave 13. This Wave ran from July through to the end of September 2024 with k BAL available for new grantees (approved via BIP-705/snapshot).

Looking back at Wave 13 and it’s goals

1. Continue to mentor and deliver with existing grantees

We started the wave with 5 grantees, 2 of which were completed during the quarter. The committee continues to provide assistance and connect these teams with internal resources to get the project over the line and expand the Balancer ecosystem. For our long running grantees, we maintain communication to ensure the project is on track. As things move fast in DeFi, if priorities change, we want to reallocate funding to projects aligned with Balancer.

2. Fund projects dedicated to increasing adoption of Balancer V3

The Grants committee has focused on this goal by funding:

• Xave Finance — long time partner building custom FX pools. This grant was awarded to cover SC development and audits to port their existing FX pools from v2 to v3.
• QuantAMM — launch partner using v3 hook infrastructure. This grant was awarded to develop a simulator to assist projects setting up pool parameters using custom or historical data.
• Balancer v3 Hookathon — hackathon aimed at hook development on v3. This has the hook building and a devrel/educational content stream.

3. Funding initiatives

Run a hook bounty program — this was replaced with the hookathon as a better use of funding.

Co-funding through agreements with supported chains — we have stayed in contact with supported chain teams but with most L1/L2s moving to mission based funding, we are yet to find suitable projects for co-funding.

Grant Achievements

After receiving applications, we approved 2 grants + a hookathon for a total of 33,502 BAL (note with BAL @ $2.00 USD).

Balancer v3 Hookathon

One of the most exciting initiatives we have currently funded by Balancer Grants is a virtual Hookathon now live here on DoraHack.io. We have extended this by 2 weeks to close for submissions on Oct 20. The Hookathon aims to incentivize exploring and developing hooks on Balancer v3 to boost a community of DeFi developers and DevRel Experts to thrive in a new flexible design space. It is a unique opportunity to experiment with the Balancer v3 hook infrastructure, collaborate with Balancer’s core developer team, build new and innovative liquidity features around existing AMMs, and win a share of a $17k prize pool.

• Announcement Article
• DoraHacks Hookathon Page

Finalized Grants

• Eridani — Dynamic Fee Research | Wave 12

This month, the team submitted their finding for research conducted on maximizing revenue captured by Balancer pools from CEX/DEX arbitrage with dynamic fee functions. We analyzed different dynamic fee functions with volatility, volume and gas fee based inputs for 8 Balancer pools to try maximize their revenue. Our approach was to study different fee functions to find functions that increase revenue from CEX/DEX arbitrages while maintaining or decreasing the average fee level in the pools. We find that dynamic fee functions could both increase revenue and decrease average fees for 4 out of the 8 studied pools, while 2 of the pools could increase revenue at the cost of increasing average fees.

For example, adopting volume based dynamic fees could increase revenue of WBTC-WETH pool by up to 40% while decreasing the average fee.

There does not seem to be an universal solution as different pools have different optimal parameters. However, volume-based fee functions show the most promising results across all pools. In summary, our findings suggest that certain pools’ revenue could be significantly increased while decreasing average pool fees by adopting dynamic fee functions. Pools with high arbitrage volume have the most to gain from these dynamic fees.

Huge thanks to @BalancerGrants for funding this study. You can read the full report here and forum discussion here.

• Mode Accelerator Prizes | Wave 12

The mode accelerator has now closed and with no submissions for Balancer, this grant was finished and the funds made available to award to other teams building on v3.

Grantee Updates — Building

The program is proud to present our grantees and their updates in alphabetic order:

• Opal Finance | Wave 11

The latest news is the release of Opal airdrop checker https://app.opaldefi.xyz/airdrop enabling community, governors and users to track their airdrop allocation, although no timeline was not voted yet for the distribution, which is why an airdrop simulator is also available on the same page for newcomers to quantify their potential earnings.

To recap the changes on the grant milestones, see image attached:
- Milestone 1 & 2 (Omnipool and Gov modules) were merged in the first audit campaign
- Milestone 3: integration of Concentrated Liq pools (ECLP), the audit is not ongoing yet, updated ETA for December 2024
- Milestone 4: Expanding to L2s, devs are doing R&D to solve the multichain Omnipool problem that was never solved yet in DeFi, nonetheless L2 only Omnipools can be deployed anytime

• QuantAMM — Protocol | Wave 12

API integration revamped and financial analysis tooling added. Decay hook will be discussed with the Balancer team this week and admin questions for MS2 are also aiming to be finalized this week.

• QuantAMM — Pool Simulator | Wave 13

Cowamm modelling, retail and dynamic fee moddeling is complete. Moving onto E-CLP modelling this week.

• Xave Finance — Porting FX pools v3 | Wave 13

We’re excited to share our progress update for this month, highlighting significant advancements in our project:

1. Omega Parameter Research and Planning: We’ve made substantial progress in researching and planning the implementation of the Omega parameter, a innovative enhancement to our FXPool’s fee structure. This upgrade aims to further optimize pool efficiency and liquidity within the Beta region.

This addition is expected to significantly enhance our pool’s ability to maintain balance and provide more attractive rates for users.

2. Audit Preparations: we’re in active discussions with reputable auditors in the DeFi space. We’re carefully selecting the right partner to ensure a comprehensive and thorough audit of our codebase, including the upcoming Omega parameter implementation.

Next Steps:

- finalize the Omega parameter implementation
- continue refining our testing protocols
- finalize audit partner selection and schedule

We’re thrilled about the potential improvements the Omega parameter will bring to our FXPool and, by extension, to the Balancer ecosystem. We appreciate the ongoing support from the Balancer community and look forward to sharing more concrete results in our next update.
Thank you for your continued interest and support in our project.

Yet to be announced:

In addition to these, we have 1 grantee working on adding new functionality to the V3 codebase that will be shared once complete. You’ll have to wait until this feature is live before we can share more details. Stay tuned!

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 13 is over but 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 information about how the Grants SP works, check out the grants page, follow us on X, or send an email to grants@balancer.community.

Balancer Grants SP is 2 months into Wave 13! This month has seen our builders keep building and a hackathon kicked off, but our treasury has continued to take a hit with the decreasing BAL price. We have always maintained a high standard for applications to be approved and this has become more so while we continue through the bear.

The benefit of this is a small batch of high quality projects and initiatives to expand the Balancer ecosystem as we progress towards the v3 launch. How have the grantees been building over August? Let’s find out below!

Grant Achievements

After receiving 44 official applications this wave, we have approved 2 grants for a total of 20,000 BAL and launched a hackathon for building hooks on Balancer v3.

Balancer v3 Hookathon

One of the most exciting initiatives we have currently funded by Balancer Grants is a virtual Hookathon now live here on DoraHack.io. The Hookathon aims to incentivize exploring and developing hooks on Balancer v3 to boost a community of DeFi developers and DevRel Experts to thrive in a new flexible design space. It is a unique opportunity to experiment with the Balancer v3 hook infrastructure, collaborate with Balancer’s core developer team, build new and innovative liquidity features around existing AMMs, and win a share of a $17k prize pool.

• Announcement Article
• DoraHacks Hookathon Page

Finalized Grants

• Eridani — Dynamic Fee Research | Wave 12

This month, the team submitted their finding for research conducted on maximizing revenue captured by Balancer pools from CEX/DEX arbitrage with dynamic fee functions. We analyzed different dynamic fee functions with volatility, volume and gas fee based inputs for 8 Balancer pools to try maximize their revenue. Our approach was to study different fee functions to find functions that increase revenue from CEX/DEX arbitrages while maintaining or decreasing the average fee level in the pools. We find that dynamic fee functions could both increase revenue and decrease average fees for 4 out of the 8 studied pools, while 2 of the pools could increase revenue at the cost of increasing average fees.

For example, adopting volume based dynamic fees could increase revenue of WBTC-WETH pool by up to 40% while decreasing the average fee.

There does not seem to be an universal solution as different pools have different optimal parameters. However, volume-based fee functions show the most promising results across all pools. In summary, our findings suggest that certain pools’ revenue could be significantly increased while decreasing average pool fees by adopting dynamic fee functions. Pools with high arbitrage volume have the most to gain from these dynamic fees.

Huge thanks to @BalancerGrants for funding this study. You can read the full report here.

Grantee Updates — Building

The program is proud to present our grantees and their updates in alphabetic order:

• Opal Finance | Wave 11

Mostly UI /UX improvements, including airdrop checker, new landing page, merging of commands to save gas fees and improve the on chain governance process, and upgrades of our Hypernative monitoring.

On partnerships, we strengthen our relationship with Usual, and canvassed new power users who already started depositing 100’s k$ in the Omnipools. Our focus is to get TVL back to launch levels.

Re: milestone of our grant, the main work going on is research and development to launch the first ever multichain Omnipool, however the development was paused to review Balancer v3 code base and identify areas for improvement of our current usage of the various AMMs.

Since the grant is dedicated to audit funding, we recently established contact with a new auditing tool that could suit our needs for the contract review of the multichain Omnipool.

• QuantAMM — Protocol | Wave 12

On the protocol, first version of the protocol on Balancer V3 is complete. Team is expanding the test framework before submitting MS1. Work on MS2 is 50% of the way there. API integration for front end is also ongoing. Audit is being organised with Cyfrin and Code4rena for mid to late October.

• QuantAMM — Pool Simulator | Wave 13

Over the past year, QuantAMM has developed a Python-based AMM simulator with a TypeScript React/Redux front end. This simulator has advanced GPU-friendly G3M core functionality, not possible before a number of QuantAMM research breakthroughs, as well as specific functionality related to dynamic weight pools such as QuantAMM BTFs.

This grant is for the QuantAMM team to build an extension to their pool simulator to allow for functionality that will mean a wide range of Balancer v3 pools can utilize the simulator. This includes dynamic fee modeling, retail fee modeling, CowAMM and other known Balancer pool types. A range of functionality to be added has been proposed that could also enhance live pool analysis given the possibility of importing live pools to the analysis set. The code will be open sourced for additional teams that build on v3 to add their variations and additional future features if needed.

To kick this off, the team has implemented forward passes of pools with externally-provided time-varying fees.

• Xave Finance — Porting FX pools v3 | Wave 13

We’re pleased to report significant progress on our project to upgrade our codebase to support Balancer V3. Here are the key highlights:

1. Development Progress: we’re in the final stages of our development work. The majority of the codebase upgrades have been completed, and we’re now focusing on refining and optimizing the implementation.
2. Invaluable Support: We want to emphasize the tremendous support we’ve received from the Balancer Dev team throughout this process. Their guidance and support have been instrumental this upgrade.
3. Next Steps: With the development work nearing completion, we’re preparing to enter the audit phase. This crucial step will ensure the security and reliability of our upgraded codebase.

We’re excited about the enhanced capabilities that Balancer V3 will bring to our project and look forward to sharing the final results with the community soon.

Yet to be announced:

In addition to these, we have 1 grantee working on adding new functionality to the V3 codebase that will be shared once complete. You’ll have to wait until this feature is live before we can share more details. Stay tuned!

We keep building!

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, Hook directory 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 13 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 information about how the Grants SP works, check out the grants page, follow us on X, or send an email to grants@balancer.community.

Balancer Grants SP was approved for Wave 13 / Q3 2024, 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 September 2024 and has a budget of 75k BAL to distribute to Balancer Grantees.

We have awarded 2 more grants this month, one being an extension to QuantAMM’s pool simulator and the second for a long term partner bringing their pools to v3. More on these below.

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, the Balancer Grants SP is here to make this reality with a variety of funding opportunities. 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 X, or send an email to grants@balancer.community.

We have added to our RFPs but we will always be open to new and unique ideas of how to improve and expand on Balancer’s flexible tech.

How have the grantees been building over July? Let’s find out below!

Grant Achievements

After receiving 18 official applications, we have approved 2 grants for a total of 20,000 BAL.

New Grantees

• QuantAMM — Pool Simulator | Wave 13

Over the past year, QuantAMM has developed a Python-based AMM simulator with a TypeScript React/Redux front end. This simulator has advanced GPU-friendly G3M core functionality, not possible before a number of QuantAMM research breakthroughs, as well as specific functionality related to dynamic weight pools such as QuantAMM BTFs.

This grant is for the QuantAMM team to build an extension to their pool simulator to allow for functionality that will mean a wide range of Balancer v3 pools can utilize the simulator. This includes dynamic fee modeling, retail fee modeling, CowAMM and other known Balancer pool types. A range of functionality to be added has been proposed that could also enhance live pool analysis given the possibility of importing live pools to the analysis set. The code will be open sourced for additional teams that build on v3 to add their variations and additional future features if needed.

Finalized Grants

• Mode Accelerator Prizes | Wave 12

The mode accelerator has now closed and with no submissions for Balancer , this grant has finished and the funds back available to award to other teams building on v3.

Grantee Updates — Building

The program is proud to present our grantees and their updates in alphabetic order:

• Eridani — Dynamic Fee Research | Wave 12

This month, we completed the data conversion, including historical block-level token ratios and fees. We developed 15 fee algorithms, incorporated feedback from ex-traders, and improved our internal pool price calculations. We finalized our simulation tool and implemented Polygon and Arbitrum pools in it.

Next, we will focus on backtesting the algorithms and pools, optimizing fee parameters, and visualizing and analyzing the results

• Opal Finance | Wave 11

Mostly UI /UX improvements, including airdrop checker, new landing page, merging of commands to save gas fees and improve the on chain governance process, and upgrades of our Hypernative monitoring.

On partnerships, we strengthen our relationship with Usual, and canvassed new power users who already started depositing 100’s k$ in the Omnipools. Our focus is to get TVL back to launch levels.

Re: milestone of our grant, the main work going on is research and development to launch the first ever multichain Omnipool, however the development was paused to review Balancer v3 code base and identify areas for improvement of our current usage of the various AMMs.

Since the grant is dedicated to audit funding, we recently established contact with a new auditing tool that could suit our needs for the contract review of the multichain Omnipool.

• QuantAMM | Wave 12

Post the Balancer V3 code freeze, we are progressing to meet our first milestones of protocol translation in the coming weeks. We have been doing a sprint on our front end, including integrating Balancer v3 api calls, which is going well; we will start a feedback process with partners in the coming month.

Yet to be announced:

In addition to these, we have 1 grantee working on adding new functionality to the V3 codebase that will be shared once complete. You’ll have to wait until this feature is live before we can share more details. Stay tuned!

We have also recently approved a grant for an existing partner building on v3, more details to come soon. We keep building!

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 13 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 information about how the Grants SP works, check out the grants page, follow us on X, or send an email to grants@balancer.community.

We’re excited to announce that the Balancer Grants SP has been approved by the community (BIP-633 snapshot vote) for another quarter which means Wave 13 is live and we’re continuing to accept grant applications!

This wave will last until end of September 2024 and has a budget of 75,000 BAL to distribute to Balancer Grantees.

The program currently has 5 live grantees building assorted integrations, novel use cases for Balancer pools and educational resources. These can be reviewed at our Finalized and Live Grants.

For further information about how the Grants SP works, check out the grants page, follow us on X, or send an email to grants@balancer.community.

How to apply

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.

Following on from the quarter of reflections and subsequent report and recommendations, the grants program will be focused on:

1. Fund projects dedicated to increasing adoption of Balancer V3

With Balancer V3 launching in Q4 2024, grants will play a significant role in incentivising projects to:

• Integrate Balancer V3.
• Create educational content, tooling and docs to lower barriers to entry for teams building on V3
• Create new use cases with Balancer custom pools
• Bounties for highly active community members providing dev support, incentivising integrations for analytics sites etc

2. Funding Initiatives

To expand the Balancer ecosystem we will be running the following specific initiatives:

• Run a hook bounty program

The program’s goal is to encourage experimentation and explore the bounds of what hook functionality can bring to Balancer pools through rapid development. These will be in the form of small awards for hook builders or audits for high quality and valuable contracts.

• Co-funding through agreements with supported chains

With new launches on chains such as Mode and existing chains who are seeking to expand development such as Polygon zkEVM, the committee has been in discussions with grant programs that are excited to jointly support projects building on Balancer and their ecosystem.

The two avenues that we will be taking are

1. General applications for funding through programs such as OP to expand our treasury
2. Project specific proposals through programs such as Polygon or Avalanche

3. Funding categories

Across these avenues of focus, categories to direct funding are:

*Only with a direct value calculation. There are generally sufficient incentives for yield aggregators. With no yield bearing assets, this is not worth funding. If the aggregator has the potential to bring high volume and TVL of yield bearing assets, then a value calculation can be made.|

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.

The team at Balancer Grants SP is excited to announce our latest grantee QuantAMM, to integrate their temporal function market making pools into Balancer V3. The grant will cover development work to enable the QuantAMM protocol to run on Balancer V3 with the ultimate goal to release innovative QuantAMM Blockchain Traded Fund products as part of their Balancer V3 launch partnership.

The grant will cover, at least, the following development work:

• QuantAMM strategy runner
• QuantAMM trading function hooks
• QuantAMM Balancer V3 base pools and admin functions
• Advanced G3M Multiblock MEV protection features and optimal rebalancing features
• Exploration of more general time decay based withdrawal fee hooks
• Audit costs and fixes

How does the grant aim to provide value to the Balancer Ecosystem?

The grant will deliver one of the first new pool types for Balancer V3: one that can be integrated with future Balancer V3 hooks, LVR mitigation fee structures and advanced yield features.

Dynamic weights have the ability to make pools more effective and combat LVR for LPs. As a result, QuantAMM pools should have a higher TVL than static pools, leading to lower slippage, which should increase liquidity depth and trading volumes.

The deliverables of this grant include contracts and audit results for deployment on top of Balancer V3.

“QuantAMM is building products that are well suited to showcase the advantages of Balancer V3 and their take on “BTFs” will leverage more advanced strategies vs index funds that have not been well adopted in DeFi. We look forward to seeing how these bring value to the ecosystem”

— Burns, Balancer Grants Committee

“We are excited to receive a Balancer grant to bring QuantAMM to Balancer V3. The integration will allow implementation of our advanced G3M features, while Balancer provides all the foundations that work best with an already established leading ecosystem.”

— Christian Harrington, co-founder QuantAMM

About QuantAMM

QuantAMMs initial set of products are dubbed Blockchain Traded Funds, BTFs. These AMM pools position the weights of the pool to best take advantage of current underlying price movements. If Ethereum is going up in value and Bitcoin isn’t, you want to be holding as much Ethereum as possible inside the pool, so the LP is not just making returns on fees but also on the holdings themselves. QuantAMM does this in a continuous, responsive way with advanced, fully on-chain TradFi style strategies. Themed exposure pools with a range of known strategies will provide LPs with a low overhead, high sophistication portfolio allocation option that surpasses unresponsive, low-reward index products. This approach also means LP avoids vault-like products where they have to trust off-chain managers with unclear strategies and exposures.

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.

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!

For further questions about how the Grants Program works, check out the grants page, follow us on X, or send an email to grants@balancer.community.

Wave Overview

The Balancer Grants program was established in August 2021 after a community discussion before evolving into a Service Provider beginning Wave 5 which we have continued on to now complete Wave 12. This Wave ran from April through to the end of June 2024 with 75k BAL available for new grantees (approved via BIP-573/snapshot).

Looking back at Wave 12 and it’s goals

1. Continue to mentor and deliver with existing grantees

This wave has seen 5 new teams approved and 3 grantees complete their deliverables. These have included projects that contributed directly to the Balancer codebase and/or worked closely with the Balancer team to create high value additions like Hooks contract support and Scaffold Balancer. We will continue to promote collaboration for a decentralized network of contributors that will make Balancer more resiliant.

2. Fund projects dedicated to increasing adoption of Balancer V3

The Grants committee has focused on this goal by funding:

• new projects to the ecosystem building on V3 (QuantAMM)
• existing projects to adopt V3 (to be announced)
• improvements to devrel (Scaffold Balancer)
• addition of tooling for projects (Buy Bot)
• adding new functionality to V3 (Protofire Hooks + 1 other)
• supporting new chain additions (Mode accelerator prizes)

We have also funded a research project taking a quantitative approach to look at dynamic fee algorithms that could be implemented via hooks or custom pools. More on this below.

As a committee we have shown ourselves as:

• Diligent assessors of grant applications with intimate understanding of the DAO and protocol.
• Trusted to find and manage grantees building on core Balancer code alongside Balancer Labs. With one grantee being on-boarded to Balancer Labs.
• Fairly recover funds from stale grantees when no longer relevant saving ~30k BAL to date
• Prudent with spending to maintain the grants treasury and limit BAL expenditure
• Supporting grantees to completion by connecting with the resources required including the Balancer core team
• We have a Hooks Repo in development by team members and are actively scoping grants to find teams or narrowing down scope with existing applicants.

Grant Achievements

After receiving applications, we approved 5 grants for a total of 44,629 BAL (note with BAL @ $3.00 USD).

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 was made available to demo the FE and released to partners building custom pools on Balancer V3.

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. The completed Scaffold Balancer is available in beta at this Github Repo.

• 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.

The bot has been released publicly with details on the Balancer Tools Hub page for how to use and customize alerts.

• Protofire — Addition of Hooks to Balancer V3 | Wave 11

With the Balancer V3 code release announced and released into the wild, we can now reveal that the Protofire team was instrumental in the development of first iteration of Hooks for Balancer V3. This was an exercise in further decentralizing the development of V3 by having external teams work closely with the Balancer devs to work on core code.

Grantee Updates — Building

The program is proud to present our grantees and their updates in alphabetic order:

• 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.

Grant progress so far:
1. Data collection and conversion for swaps and liquidity management events.
2. Did initial statistical tests to measure viability of different variables as variable fee function inputs.
3. Started building a backtester for fees and liquidity provider returns.

• 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.

• QuantAMM | Wave 12

We can now announce that QuantAMM has been building on V3 contracts to integrate their temporal function market making pools. The grant will cover development work to enable the QuantAMM protocol to run on Balancer V3 with the ultimate goal to release innovative QuantAMM Blockchain Traded Fund products as part of their Balancer V3 launch partnership.

• The grant will cover, at least, the following development work:
• QuantAMM strategy runner
• QuantAMM trading function hooks
• QuantAMM Balancer V3 base pools and admin functions
• Advanced G3M Multiblock MEV protection features and optimal rebalancing features
• Exploration of more general time decay based withdrawal fee hooks
• Audit costs and fixes

Yet to be announced:

In addition to these, we have 1 grantee working on adding new functionality to the V3 codebase that will be shared once complete. You’ll have to wait until this feature is live before we can share more details. Stay tuned!

We are also in the early stages of the approvals for more projects that will come to light in the coming months. We keep building!

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 is over but 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 information about how the Grants SP works, check out the grants page, follow us on X, or send an email to grants@balancer.community.

The team at Balancer Grants SP is excited to announce our latest grantee is the Eridani team to tackle 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, simulating and analyzing different dynamic fee algorithm alternatives. The ultimate goal is to have a number of tested algorithms that can be implemented into custom Balancer pools or other mechanisms made possible by V3 that could be used to redistribute LVR to LPs.

The grant will cover, at least, the following variables as inputs for a fee function:

• DEX Volatility
• Location in a block (first access auction etc.)
• Time since the last pool interaction
• Gas price
• CEX price
• CEX intrablock volatility
• CEX trading volume

In addition to considering different variables, the grant will also explore various potential update frequencies for these variables and assess whether different pools and chains require different suitable dynamic fee functions.

How does the grant aim to provide value to the Balancer Ecosystem?

The grant will deliver results in a form of blog or forum post as well as fee algorithm backtesting results and code that the community can use to aid protocol development.

If the grant is successful, dynamic fee pools would have a higher APR than equivalent pools with static fees. As a result, dynamic fee pools should have a higher TVL than static pools, leading to lower slippage, which should increase trading volume compared to a static fee pool with higher slippage.

The deliverables of this grant include tested algorithms that can be implemented by teams as hooks or custom pools.

“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. LVR is one of the next big hurdles to be solved in DeFi and we want to contribute to solutions for the industry. If this research produces high quality outcomes, it has the potential to be extended.”

— Burns, Balancer Grants Committee

“We are excited to receive a Balancer grant to research variable fee pools as variable fees play a key role in mitigating LVR. LVR is one of the biggest challenges in DeFi causing centralization of Ethereum’s block building market.”

— Antero Eloranta, DeFi researcher

About Eridani

We are a group of independent crypto researchers conducting research on blockchain fundamentals and DeFi.

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.

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!

For further questions about how the Grants Program works, check out the grants page, follow us on Twitter, or send an email to grants@balancer.community.

The team at Balancer Grants SP can announce we now have a buy bot that supports tokens in Balancer pools on all chains where Balancer is 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 built for this bot and will continue to host with the potential for future expansion.

The bot has been released publicly with details on the Balancer Tools Hub page for how to use and customize alerts.

Alerts can include:

• Alert Image — (customizable through /manage -> settings menu)
• Trade size indicator via # of emojis — (# of tokens per emoji is customizable)
• [tokenName] Purchased! — (link token name text to token address)
• Spent: [tokenIn]
• Bought: [tokenOut]
• Price: 1 [token] = $ [USD]
• Links: TX | Buy | Deposit | Chart (more can be added by alert creator)
• TX — transaction record on chain explorer
• Buy — link to cowswap/1inch
• Deposit — link to Balancer pool
• Chart: Link to Dexscreener (where supported)

“This tool has been long requested by members of the Balancer community and we look forward to seeing the adoption it receives and its impact in the various communities who use Balancer pools”

— Burns, Balancer Grants Committee

About Bleu

We’re web3 experts partnering with companies and DAOs to make blockchain interactions simple and user-friendly. Our mission is to bridge the gap between blockchain’s potential and current user interfaces, helping onboard the next billion users to blockchain.

Website: https://bleu.builders

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.

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!

For further questions about how the Grants Program works, check out the grants page, follow us on Twitter, or send an email to grants@balancer.community.

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.

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.

We have added to our RFPs but we will always be open to new and unique ideas of how to improve and expand on Balancer’s flexible tech.

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.

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.

The bot is in beta and can be demo’d by contacting anyone from Balancer Grants or Maxis. This will be added to the Tools Hub page once released publicly.

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.

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.