Roadmap update | July 2022

Continuous rewards, wallpaper designs, and what's next for Balanced.

Roadmap update | July 2022

The migration to continuous rewards is now live on mainnet. This was by far the largest upgrade since Balanced launched, and also one of the smoothest. The smoothness was not a coincidence: this upgrade was tested more thoroughly than any other, with significant resources spent developing the tests and defining operational best practices.

Here's what the Balanced contributors accomplished in June:

Smart contracts:

  • Deployed the DEX, Loans, and Rewards contracts in Java
  • Migrated to the continuous rewards incentive structure
  • Moved governance power and network fee rewards to staked BALN only
  • Reorganised the outstanding issues, raised new issues, and determined the next phase of Balanced smart contract development
  • Prioritised multi-collateral and bBALN for the next phase of work
  • Deployed a multi-collateral version of the Loans contract to testnet
  • Began researching the BTP xCall service and how to implement it for cross-chain smart contract calls

Front end / back end:

  • Deployed the LP token staking interface so users could stake LP tokens and earn BALN after the continuous rewards migration
  • Updated the Stats page to include implied APYs for staking BALN and the fees earned by each liquidity pool
  • Updated the Swap UI to make it easy to interact with the Stability Fund
  • Added price info to the currency selectors on the Trade page
  • Continued to work on an enhanced liquidity pools section to display the APY for each pool
  • Began building a frontend for ICON Bridge within Balanced
  • Built new backend APIs to more easily build new charts and historical data sets

Quality of life and code improvements:

  • Updated the Balanced docs and white paper to fit the current narrative and feature set
  • Fixed a bug that crashed the UI when trading bnUSD in some instances
  • Fixed a bug with IUSDC LP token decimal places
  • Fixed several bugs associated with step limits of the new contract upgrades
  • Re-added the option to remove custom tokens from the UI

What's next for Balanced?

Now that the continuous rewards migration is complete and all the core smart contracts have been upgraded to Java, it’s time to start looking ahead. The next step for Balanced is to finalise the feature set, and turn Balanced into a full DAO.

After much discussion, the early contributors came up with these features:

  • Multi-collateral loans: the ability to deposit multiple assets as collateral and borrow bnUSD against them
  • Boosted BALN: an upgrade to Balanced token economics discussed and voted on in BIP4
  • Cross-chain architecture and development: implement the xCall service to expand Balanced into a cross-chain product
  • Full DAO operations: fully decentralise development upgrades
  • Code audit: consult with an outside audit firm to audit this new feature set
  • Marketing website: significant updates to balanced.network to reflect the core feature set
  • Stats page enhancements: updates to the Stats page to accomodate for multiple collateral types and Boosted BALN

If there's anything else you'd consider a “core feature” that isn't included above, share your thoughts in the Balanced Discord or start a thread on the Balanced forum.


Monthly performance

In the month from 8 June - 8 July, Balanced earned 1,973 bnUSD from loan fees and $24,668 from swap fees, for a total value of $26,641 – 63.3% less than the previous month. While this is a significant decline, it was expected given the state of the markets recently.

Balanced's income and expenses over the last 2 months.

The DAO Fund increased by $33,969 – a 1.97% gain – to leave a total balance of $1,755,690 based on current market prices.

The amount held in the Balanced DAO Fund compared to the previous month.

Balanced wallpapers

You may have noticed that this month's roadmap update has a new look. Going forward, every roadmap update will have a bespoke design, which you can download as a wallpaper for your device. You can find this month's design, 'Bloom', on the new Balanced wallpapers page:

Wallpapers | Balanced
A collection of Balanced wallpapers for desktop and mobile devices.

Each design will also be minted as a single NFT and auctioned on Craft. Bloom will be listed on Craft over the coming week, then you can expect to see a new NFT released alongside the monthly roadmap update.


Goals for July

Smart contracts:

  • Deploy multi-collateral upgrade to mainnet
  • Implement the final changes for the bBALN contracts, then begin actively testing
  • Finalise the plans to reach a full DAO
  • Update to a continuous network fees reward structure and deploy on testnet
  • Do more research on the xCall service

Front end / back end:

  • Reach the final stages of testing the interface for multi-collateral loans
  • Deploy the liquidity pool upgrade to display the APYs for all pools
  • Integrate new backend APIs into the app
  • Improve the LP token staking UI/UX
  • Improve the Stats page and integrate new backend APIs

If you have any questions or want to discuss these changes, start a discussion on the Balanced forum or in the Discord channel.