[BIP-630] Fund Balancer Maxis for Q3 2024

PR with Payload

https://github.com/BalancerMaxis/multisig-ops/pull/1069

Introduction

The Maxis have firmly established themselves as the on-chain operators for the Balancer DAO. By evolving into a DevOps powerhouse with a strong focus on automation, we are strategically positioned to meet the challenges of Balancer's ambitious expansion plans.

As Balancer gears up for a transformative phase, with innovative products slated for release in Q3 and Q4 2024, the Maxis are ready to lead the charge. Exciting developments on the horizon include the groundbreaking CoWAMM technology and the highly anticipated v3 installment of Balancer tech. Our team is dedicated to ensuring a seamless integration experience for partners and uninterrupted operations of the protocol.

To achieve this, we will lay a robust foundation for all on-chain operations needed for these new products while maintaining and optimizing the current infrastructure with utmost efficiency.

Initiatives

Organizing initiatives into work packages has significantly enhanced our ability to focus on specific operational domains with clear deliverables. Moving forward, we will concentrate our efforts on two key work packages that promise high-value outcomes for the DAO.

Initiative 1: On-Chain DevOps Hub

Co-Leads: Xeonus & Tritium

Team: gosuto, Zekraken, Zen Dragon (and freelancers)

Summary

With our increased development capacity, we have successfully undertaken significant initiatives and expanded our responsibilities. This includes operating and migrating the OpenZeppelin infrastructure to OZ v2, optimizing the codebase, and reducing gas costs. Additionally, we have completed the Secondary Token Reward injector infrastructure, set to go operational in Q3.

Our main focus moving forward includes enhancing fee processing infrastructure, ensuring scalability with upcoming product launches, and extending our operations to new chains. Our objectives reflect these priorities:

Objectives

1. Operate and maintain new chain deployments

• Support go-live of Fraxtal and Mode
• Integrate new chains into our operations infrastructure such as BAL token emissions
• Deploy and maintain any needed infrastructure to operate those chains

2. Fee Processing

• Conceptualize how to scale fee processing for multiple product lines
• Modularize fee processing pipeline and finalize refactoring to new bal_tools repository

3. Secondary Token Reward Management

• Rewards Injector v2: Beta Testing and full operations onboarding
• Provisioning of a new Rewards Injector management UI
• Establishing self-service and management tooling for partners

4. AURA Position Management

• Finalizing automatic execution of vlAURA voting
• Implementation of a self-service module for the BD team

5. Gauges and core pools

• Automatic core pool detection and maintenance
• Automatic gauge removal flagging for stale gauges

6. Execution of Token Grants

• Maintaining and provisioning of token distribution grants such as the ARB and OP grants
• Advising on how to design and execute token grant programs

7. Omni-chain Operations: Chainlink Automation & Gas Stations

• Have all Chainlink upkeeps owned by a single omnichain multisig—no more EOAs
• Establish omni-chain gas station contracts to feed all relevant dependencies with ETH (or chain gas tokens) and LINK (gas for automation jobs)
• Build monitoring and potential automatic refills of upkeeps and gas station infrastructure
• Sunset various multisig addresses where possible in order to move towards a single omni-chain multisig address for all operations

8. Analytics

• Aid in designing a new analytics pipeline and suite that integrates all current and future product lines

Initiative 2: Support and execution of Growth Initiatives and Product Launches

Lead: MikeB

Team: Maxis

Summary

Balancer v3’s tech and documentation reveal was initially planned for April 2024 but has been rescheduled to go live at the beginning of Q3. This adjustment anticipates an increased workload in both partner management and further development of key components such as Balancer v3 documentation and the overall onboarding experience.

In parallel, we are expanding to several new chains, expecting a rise in partner requests for secondary rewards, advising on expansion plans, and provisioning liquidity.

Objectives for v3 design:

1. Onboarding of Innovative Teams: Attract and integrate teams that are developing novel automated market makers (AMMs) for Balancer v3.
2. Facilitate Hook Development: Bring innovative hooks to market through developer outreach and incentive alignment.
3. Market Fit Identification for v3 Products: Assess and establish the market relevance of v3 offerings..
4. Serving as a Liaison: Act as the primary point of contact for external teams working on Balancer v3, facilitating seamless communication and collaboration.
5. Technical Support Coordination: Collaborate with the integrations and BLabs teams to ensure that building teams receive adequate technical assistance.
6. Finalizing v3 Feature Scope: Conclude the initial feature set for Balancer v3, aligning it with market needs and developer capabilities.
7. Balancer v3 documentation

• Support in finalizing and further improving core components of documentation repository for v3

8. UI Beta Testing and Support

Objectives for Growth Initiatives

Partner Onboarding Experience

• Provide an in-depth and comprehensive partner onboarding documentation for both Balancer v2 and Balancer v3 tech
• Provide guides and content for the official documentation on how to integrate with Balancer as a partner
• Advise partners on liquidity provisioning and assist in onboarding and any on-chain executions necessary.

3. Onboard new liquidity on new chain deployments
4. Assist in establishing new product launches such as the potential CoWAMM product.

Finally, the Maxis team is committed to ensuring efficient on-chain operations for the Balancer DAO. We manage governance-related change control processes, oversee DevOps and multisig automation, and provide infrastructure guidance. Our responsibilities include automating on-chain tasks with OZ Defender and Chainlink Automation, developing smart contracts and tooling, supporting technical best practices, processing bi-weekly fees, and managing grant programs and incentive distributions. These efforts ensure smooth and reliable operations within the Balancer ecosystem.

Service Provider Name & Overview: Balancer Maxis

Leader(s): Xeonus, joined by the talented Mike B, Zekraken, Zen Dragon, Tritium and Gosuto

Contributors/Freelancers: Hyferion, jalbrekt

Adhere to [BIP-372] and the SP standards: YES

Domains of Operation

• Governance and Protocol Operations
• Strategy and Business Development
• On-Chain Operations (DevOps)
• Pool Design and Ecosystem Coordination
• Data Analytics and Reporting

Key Objectives per Operational Discipline:

1. Governance and Protocol Operations

• Leading governance procedures, ensuring their execution and integrity.

• Facilitating technical discussions within governance scopes.

• Setting up governance votes and reviewing payloads for DAO transactions.

• Crafting detailed governance proposals and specifications.

• Offering deep technological insights during governance deliberations.

• Assisting in specifications to proposals for proper payload execution

• Infrastructure and tool creation for enhancing governance operations.

• Automating tasks, reducing human dependency in governance functions.

• Creating UI tools that support operational tasks (past examples: pool creation, reward injectors, linear pool deployment [deprecated])

2. Strategy and Business Development

• Applying profound product and technical knowledge in strategic planning.
• Engaging with new partners and broader Web3 communities.
• Providing technical support and insights for strategic development.
• Assisting in custom pool creations and new chain launches.
• Managing revenue flows and direct incentives with partners.
• Facilitating discussions on financial incentives and revenue optimization.
• Acting as active partner support and assisting new partners navigate the ecosystem

3. On-Chain Operations (DevOps)

• Buid, administer and operate governance associated change control processes surrounding on-chain treasury and protocol operations (if applicable)
  • Overseeing DevOps and automating multisig operations.
  • Building multisig payloads and conducting multi-person peer-reviews
  • Guidance on infrastructure-related and operational aspects of the protocol and the DAO.
• Maintaining and developing Taking over automation of regular on-chain tasks through on- chain automation for OZ Defender and Chainlink Automation.migrating to new version of it
• Core development, aiding in automation and data management.
• Smart contract development(when needed) of helpers and tooling for partners.
• Support in technical best practices.
• Bi-weekly fees processing and reporting
• Grant program management and incentive distribution automation and handling.
• Overseeing Stipend Distribution Automation

4. Pool Design and Ecosystem Coordination

• Designing pools for the protocol, aligning with governance specifications.
• Liaising with the ecosystem for synchronized functionality and growth.
• Assistance in pool design and migration to v3
• Token whitelisting and front-end testing.
• Assisting in the technical aspects of pool and gauge creation.
• Testing of v3 front-end infrastructure

5. Data Analytics and Reporting

• Spearheading data analytics, offering valuable insights through reports and dashboards.
• Maintaining high-level expertise in protocol-related data.
• Providing quarterly financial reports
• Assisting in data handling, contributing to informed decision-making.

Length of Engagement & Budget:

Given the successful completion of critical infrastructure initiatives and the ongoing demand for development resources, the Maxis have adopted a flexible discretionary budget approach, managing funds conservatively. We will continue operating in a similar manner as in Q2, anticipating increased demand for automation work and partner support due to new product launches.

Our spending will be closely monitored, with clear insights provided in our monthly reports, as demonstrated in Q2 2024. We believe this setup will significantly aid Balancer DAO in achieving its goals of becoming the hub for LRT, LST, and LRT liquidity.

Overall, people costs in USDC terms will remain consistent with previous quarters. The Maxis will receive part of their compensation in locked BAL, vesting over one year. With an average of 56% of compensation taken as locked BAL, this demonstrates our strong commitment and alignment with the Balancer ecosystem.

Length of engagement: 3 months Budget: 172’500 USDC and 14’464 BAL

Cost Breakdown

Position	Cost per month
People Cost (USDC), 4.7 FTE	46’500 USDC
People Cost, 4.7 FTE (BAL, with 1.25 multiplier) - Locked for 1 year	4’821 BAL
Discretionary Budget to fund freelancers (2 FTE) and infrastructure cost (USDC)	20’000 USDC

For Q3 the Maxis have decreased the ask for locked BAL resulting in a decrease of ask in the budget by 24'000 USD while also saving 27'000 USDC in Q2 from the discretionary budget which rolls over to Q3. This results in total savings of 51’000 USD compared to Q2.

ETH Address to Receive Funds: 0x166f54F44F271407f24AA1BE415a730035637325

Impact on the Treasury

The Treasury wallets currently hold ~3.95M BAL. Funding the Balancer Maxis for Q3 2024 would cost around 0.37% of the treasury’s BAL holdings, which annualizes to ~1.46% of the treasury’s BAL. The Treasury wallets currently hold ~5.43M in stables. Funding the USDC portion would cost around 3.18% of the treasury’s stable reserve, which annualizes to ~12.7%.

Technical Specification

The Balancer DAO multisig 0x10A19e7eE7d7F8a52822f6817de8ea18204F2e4f will interact with USDC 0xA0b86991c6218b36c1d19D4a2e9Eb0cE3606eB48 by writing transfer passing the Maxi Safe 0x166f54F44F271407f24AA1BE415a730035637325 as recipient and amount 172’500 USDC as 172500000000.

Furthermore the Balancer DAO multisig 0x10A19e7eE7d7F8a52822f6817de8ea18204F2e4f will interact with BAL 0xba100000625a3754423978a60c9317c58a424e3D by writing transfer passing the Maxi Safe 0x166f54F44F271407f24AA1BE415a730035637325 as recipient and amount 14’464 as 14464000000000000000000.