Roadmap update | November 2022

Boosted BALN launches; live voting and ICON Bridge to come in November.

Roadmap update | November 2022

The Balanced contributors spent October preparing for the core Boosted BALN upgrade, which had a successful launch on October 31. A huge congratulations to everyone involved in the discussion, development, and deployment of this feature.

The final stage of the bBALN upgrade will take place during November. Live voting gives bBALN holders control over the amount of BALN inflation directed to each liquidity pool. Teams will be able to submit a vote to add their pool, then incentivise (or “bribe”) bBALN holders to vote for it. The launch date will be announced on Twitter once the app is ready for internal testing.

The ICON Bridge integration hasn’t progressed as quickly as hoped, but we expect to release the Balanced transfer UI within the month. A grant was recently approved for an ICON Bridge SDK which would simplify future integration work, so the contributors are also keeping a close eye on its progress.

Here’s what the Balanced contributors accomplished in October:

Smart contracts

  • Completed and tested the core Boosted BALN upgrade
  • Implemented and tested arbitrary governance calls (to be deployed after the final bBALN upgrade)
  • Began creating a testing environment for the BTP xCall service
  • Added a forum link as a parameter for new governance votes

Front end / back end

  • Updated the app to support the core Boosted BALN upgrade
  • Made the wallet accessible on every page
  • Added the ability to set a 1 – 14 day voting period for new proposals
  • Upgraded the Stats page to use new APIs, track Stability Fund fees, and display some bBALN-related info

Quality of life and code improvements

  • Refactored the network fee earnings calculation
  • Fixed minor bBALN issues, like the inability to keep the same unlock date when locking more BALN
  • Updated the Balanced docs with user-facing information about bBALN

All Balanced development progress can be tracked in real-time by following our pull requests, open/closed issues, and commits in the Balanced GitHub repo.


Boosted BALN launch

During October, something unusual happened: the contributors were ahead of schedule. The last roadmap update planned to have the core features on testnet by the end of October, but we were able to bump it up to a mainnet launch.

We shared the plans with the community in several tweet threads, in addition to this blog post:

Prepare for the Boosted BALN upgrade
bBALN is Balanced’s new token economics model, and it launches October 31.

The core Boosted BALN upgrade went live on October 31 at 6:45pm UTC, and network fees were reactivated on November 7.

So far, 588 wallets have locked up 9.3 million BALN. There are 4 million bBALN, which gives an average lock-up time of 1.73 years.

However, 2.6 million BALN are still staked. If this includes some of yours, lock it up to hold voting power and earn a share of the network fees. View this tweet thread to get started:

And learn more in the docs:

Lock up Balance Tokens - Balanced docs
Learn how to lock up Balance Tokens to get Boosted BALN (bBALN).

If you have questions or notice any issues, reach out through the Balanced Discord channel.


Liquidity incentives and bribes

The final Boosted BALN feature, live voting, is on track to be delivered by the end of November. The date will be confirmed once the app is ready for internal testing.

Live voting gives bBALN holders the ability to influence the amount of BALN allocated to incentivised liquidity pools. You’ll be able to delegate bBALN voting power to your preferred liquidity pools, and adjust the amount every 10 days. The BALN incentives will be updated once a week to reflect the total bBALN allocated to each pool.

At launch, you’ll only be able to vote for the 7 liquidity pools that are already incentivised, but bBALN holders can list more pools through governance. Once listed, these pools can also “bribe” bBALN holders with additional incentives to vote for them.

Live voting and bribing will bring exciting new opportunities for teams to bootstrap liquidity for their protocol, and for bBALN holders to maximise their yield.

For example, imagine the FRĀMD team would like to add BALN incentives to the FRMD/bnUSD pool. Here’s how that would work:

  1. FRĀMD submits a proposal to add the FRMD/bnUSD pool as a data source.
  2. The community approves the proposal, so bBALN holders can now vote for the FRMD/bnUSD pool – but why should they?
  3. The FRĀMD team sets up a FRMD token “bribe” to reward bBALN holders who vote for the FRMD/bnUSD pool.
  4. The bBALN holders who vote for it receive FRMD incentives, and the FRMD/bnUSD liquidity providers receive a share of the BALN incentives.

We look forward to watching the liquidity dynamic evolve after the release of this feature.


Monthly performance

In the month from 11 October – 10 November, Balanced earned $12,365 from fees:

  • 1,062 bnUSD from loans
  • 2,472 bnUSD from the Stability Fund
  • $8,831 from swaps

Although caused by turbulent market conditions, that’s a 138% increase from the previous month. It’s also the first time Balanced has recorded an uptick in earnings since the June 2022 roadmap update.

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

The DAO Fund increased by $14,937 – a 1.0% gain – to leave a total balance of $1,384,579 based on current market prices.

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

Balanced wallpapers and NFTs

This month’s roadmap design, Eclipse, has been added to the collection of Balanced wallpapers.

The animated version has been added to the Balanced NFT collection on Craft.

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If you’d like a chance to win the Eclipse NFT, retweet the roadmap announcement on Twitter and let us know your liquidity incentivisation plans. The winner will be announced 7 days after publishing.


Goals for November

The main focus for November is to launch the final bBALN token economics upgrade and the interface for ICON Bridge:

Smart contracts

  • Deploy live voting and bribing to mainnet
  • Deploy arbitrary governance voting to testnet

Front end / back end

  • Update the Vote page to support live voting
  • Launch the ICON Bridge interface

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