product update

Roadmap update | Q3 2024

Five blockchain connections, smart contract audits, cross-chain enhancements, and 19 proposals.

Balanced Official

Jul 30, 2024 • 6 min read

During the second quarter of 2024, the contributors launched Balanced on five blockchains in quick succession. They also prepared for cross-chain loans, completed a smart contract audit, and squashed bugs that came up during this period of rapid development.

Here’s what the contributors accomplished since the Q2 roadmap update:

Smart contracts

Deployed smart contracts on:
- Arbitrum
- Base
- Optimism
Prepared smart contracts to deploy on Polygon
Completed a Solidity (EVM) smart contract audit with Hashlock
Worked with MoveBit to audit the Move (Sui) smart contracts
Unified wBTC from Arbitrum and BTCB from BNB Chain under a single BTC token
Made progress on the Clarity integration for Balanced and GMP contracts on Stacks
Reached the integration testing phase for Balanced and GMP contracts on Solana
Added functionality to the router contract to support Stability Fund swaps

Front-end / back-end

Launched Balanced on:
- Avalanche
- Arbitrum
- BNB Chain
- Base
- Havah
Added the ability to swap through the Stability Fund
Added support for the unified BTC token
Finalised the cross-chain loan UI
Began work on the Injective connection

Quality of life and code improvements

Improved the handling of multi-chain tokens
Improved the sign-in experience
Fixed various decimal issues
Fixed a layout issue with liquidity incentives
Refactored the swap and bridge code
Fixed an issue that occurred when connected to an unsupported EVM chain
Added support for USDT on ICON
Retired BTCB transferred to ICON via ICON Bridge
Improved handling for trades with a high price impact
Added the fee APR to your liquidity pool details

Marketing initiatives

Published Balanced connects to Avalanche
Published Balanced connects to Arbitrum & BNB Chain
Published Balanced connects to Base
Published Balanced connects to Havah
Published The state of cross-chain on Balanced
Published Beyond blockchain borders (HackerNoon)
Prepared content for the cross-chain loans release
Ramped up the social media presence with more regular posts
Purchased Twitter Premium for maximum visibility

Cross-chain progress

Since the last roadmap update, Balanced has connected to five blockchains: Avalanche, Arbitrum, BNB Chain, Base, and Havah.

Cross-chain loans are up next, followed by connections to Injective, Optimism, and Polygon.

There’s a lot to catch up on, so check out this post for a recap of Balanced’s journey and a preview of where it’s going next:

Governance updates

Governance slowed down just slightly over the last 3 months, with 19 proposals for bBALN holders to vote on:

DAO performance

Over the last 3 months, Balanced earned $33,018 from fees:

1,640 bnUSD from loans
$14,569 from the Stability Fund
$16,809 from swaps

$4,953 of that was distributed to bBALN holders, which gives BALN a 30-day trailing APR of 1.21%.

$16,509 was used to buy and burn ICX, fulfilling Balanced’s role in the economic enshrinement.

Balanced’s income and expenses over the last 6 months.

Holdings have dropped by $105,382 since the last roadmap update, mostly due to DFP 10, which gave PARROT9 $170k to work on Balanced until the end of the year.

The amount Balanced held in the DAO Fund, Reserve Fund, and as protocol-owned liquidity compared to April 29.

15,850,924 BALN have been locked in 892 wallets. There’s a total of 7,926,118 bBALN, giving an average lock-up time of exactly 2 years.

The current bBALN stats, taken from the Vote page.

Economic enshrinement

In the five months that have passed since the economic enshrinement was enacted:

Balanced has burned 148,424 ICX
ICON has supplied ~$2.6M of liquidity for sICX, AVAX, BNB, BTC, ETH, and INJ
ICON has provided ~228k sICX to incentivise the Balanced Savings Rate

Keep an eye on the enshrinement stats from burn.icon.community and the ICON enshrinement section on the Stats page.

The liquidity ICON has supplied and the ICX Balanced has burned to fulfil the enshrinement.

Savings Rate

The Savings Rate has grown steadily over the past few months. It now offers an average return of 15% per year, thanks to incentives generated through borrower interest and ICON blockchain emissions. This translates to over $9,000 in rewards each month, with 75,280 sICX and 24,190 bnUSD paid out to date.

The amount of bnUSD deposited continues to range between 750k - 970k.

The rewards available and amount of bnUSD deposited into the Savings Rate.

You can move bnUSD in and out of the Savings Rate without any waiting times, so make sure to take a look next time you’re on the Home page.

Balanced wallpapers & NFTs

The cover for this roadmap update, Burst, has been added to the collection of Balanced wallpapers.

The animated version has been added to the Balanced NFT collection, which you can view on the Balanced website:

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If you’d like a chance to win the Burst NFT, share a meme about Balanced or your favourite update from the roadmap on Twitter. The post with the most engagement wins, so make sure to tag @BalancedDeFi to get it re-shared.

The winner will be announced in 10 days.

Plans for Q3 2024

During Q3, the contributors plan to:

Launch cross-chain loans
Launch Balanced on Injective, Optimism, and Polygon
Deploy smart contracts on Sui, Solana, Stacks, and Stellar
Complete a Solana smart contract audit with Hashlock
Design the interface for concentrated liquidity
Improve stability and address technical debt
Roll out a new soft liquidation feature for loans
Add support for more collateral types, like wstETH and weETH

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