[BIP-93] Enable BADGER/rETH 50/50 Gauge [Ethereum] w/10% emissions cap

Gauge Proposal Template:

Summary: This proposal is to add a gauge with a 10% emissions cap for the BADGER/rETH 50/50 Core Pool. This would enter as a core pool under BIP-19, meaning Balancer's protocol fees earned on this pool would be returned as voting incentives on it.

References/Useful links:

• Website: Main Website Vaults dApp
• Documentation: Gitbook
• Github Page: https://github.com/Badger-Finance/Github 1
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/BadgerDAO
• Discord: Discord

Protocol Description:

BadgerDAO is a well established DAO building the infrastructure for Bitcoin in DeFi. Badger Vaults currently have over $80m in TVL as well with more TVL spread across DeFi in Badger created liquidity. Badger also has ibBTC, the number 5 Bitcoin synthetic in defi. BADGER is the governance token of BadgerDAO which allows for users to vote on protocol changes and initiatives of the DAO. Holding BADGER allows users to receive boosted emissions on deposits within the Badger Vaults ecosystem.

Price History: $BADGER, Price History for BADGER can be found on coingecko

Motivation:

Badger would like to create liquidity with a BADGER / ETH pairing. This gauge will provide a yielding opportunity for BADGER holders who want to pair with ETH. It will also provide more efficient liquidity that will increase Balancer trading volumes and fees because of arbitrage opportunities between this gauge and the BADGER/wBTC gauge. Also, Balancer and BADGER LPs will earn the rETH staking rewards from the pool.

Badger is a supporter of, and believer in, censorship resistance. We believe that the Rocketpool model of decentralized, permissionless node operations and staking are the future of privacy and security. It is for this reason that we selected rETH for pairing in this LP.

Incentivization of the BADGER/rETH 50/50 Pool will attract meaningful amounts of liquidity to the Balancer ecosystem. We’re interested in having a diverse set of exchanges which support the BADGER token liquidity and giving Badger supporters many opportunities to earn fees and yield on their tokens. Balancer is our preferred DEX partner for this pair.

Specifications:

1. Governance:

• Proposal: Any member of the community can propose improvements to governance or tokenomics in our Discord
• Council: Badger has a community elected governance council who helps community members refine their proposals. This includes seeking broad community feedback through a Discord RFF process
• Forum Signaling and Snapshot: The proposal is posted on the Badger Forum when it is well formed, technical viability has been assessed and suitable alternatives or variations have been identified. After the community has provided feedback on the forum the proposal is updated, if needed, and a decision is made to take the proposal to a snapshot vote.
• BadgerDAO has a hierarchy of different multisig accounts that handle operations within the DAO. These have specific use cases and are outlined in detail in the repo linked here: Badger Multisigs. The highest risk operations are controlled by a timelock address which needs to be triggered and has a 2 day time delay to perform any actions.

2. Oracles: 2. Badger does not rely on any external oracles

3. Audits: Audits have been performed by multiple top tier audit agencies. Web2 has been fully audited and reviewed by Halborn and we have an ongoing relationship with Quantstamp and code4rena. Badger Audits can be found on badger.com here: Security & Audits

4. Centralization vectors:

• Badger does use upgradeable contracts for many of the products we offer, though these are protected by a 2 day time lock for prevention of issues.
• Our API and frontend are hosted by centralized entities and we are releasing an IPFS hosted access point titled “Chadger” that is fully permissionless.
• BadgerDAO has a hierarchy of different multisig accounts handling operations within the DAO. These have specific use cases and are outlined in detail here: Badger Multisigs
• Our DeFi pools do not liquidate users and so there are no liquidation risk vectors.

5. Market History:

• The BADGER token has been actively trading since December 2020. Price movements are largely correlated to the price of BTC and to the overall crypto market cycles.
• BADGER currently trades on Balancer and Curve in a BADGER+BTC pair as well as large positions in Univ V2, V3
• The Balancer pair has a TVL $7m and Curve has a TVL of $2.7m.
• Volume regularly approaches 1% / day.
• Comparable pairs have had >$1m daily average volume during this time across Uni v2/3 and Sushi. We believe this gauge will bring consistent volume and fees to Balancer.
• Badger has been actively trading since December 2020. Badger valuation has moved in step with the markets, bear and bull.
• Pool: Balancer Pool
• Gauge w/10% emissions cap: 0xb32Ae42524d38be7E7eD9E02b5F9330fCEf07f3F

6. Value: This pool will be the primary source of liquidity for BADGER paired with ETH. It will also provide arbitrage trading with the BADGER/wBTC pool. Historically, BADGER pools generate reliable volume and consistent fees.