[BIP-801] Fund Balancer Maxis for Q2 to Q3 2025

PR with Payload

https://github.com/BalancerMaxis/multisig-ops/pull/1832

Authors: @Xeonus @gosuto @ZenDragon, @Mike_B and @zekraken

TL;DR

• Renew the current bi-annual contract for another six months
• Deliverables focus on automation, security and white glove partner management
• With the departure of @lipman the Maxis will take over all BD efforts with @ZenDragon as new BD lead
• Reduced discretionary budget by two thirds
• Overall lower footprint on treasury (~$250k annually); both in terms of stablecoins and $BAL

Introduction

To streamline operations and solidify Balancer's position as a leading DEX, we propose to further restructure our service portfolio into a specialized on-chain DevSecOps and partner management team. This strategic shift has not only enhanced efficiency but also significantly reduced operational costs over the last 6 months.
Building on this success, we are requesting an optimized funding package for Q2-Q3 2025 to continue delivering exceptional service and support, while showcasing Balancer's commitment to innovation. This proposal requests funding the Balancer Maxis SP for the upcoming 6 months from Q2 to Q3 of 2025.

Initiatives

We propose to work on 3 key initiatives that fully align the DAOs goals of becoming an efficient, profitable, innovative and builder friendly DEX. Looking back at our previous funding proposal, we want to continue with improving on-chain automation and operations as we still see great potential in simplifying processes within the DAO. Additionally, partner management and advising product development go hand-in-hand as we are at the forefront of managing DAO interfacing requests and innovation. Based on these focus points, we propose following initiatives:

Initiative 1: On-chain Operations and Security Management (DevSecOps)

Co-Leads: @Xeonus & @gosuto
Team: jalbrekt
Summary
We have made significant improvements of on-chain operations, such as nearly hands-off automation of fee processing for Balancer v2, interruption free automation of BAL reward distribution as well as significantly simplifying the partner onboarding experience. We want to continue to improve and automate as many aspects of our infrastructure and fee processing as possible while also advising on on-chain security. The next natural iteration is the transformation from DevOps to DevSecOps with support from Hypernative and Balancer Labs:

• On-chain operations and monitoring
• Self-service modules and management (Ops UI)
• Automated Fee processing
• Treasury multi-sig management oversight and execution in collaboration with @kpk
• Leading of a newly formed security council of ecosystem participants

Objectives

1. Manage and Operate Balancer deployments (v2 and v3) across chains
   1. Ensure that proxy infrastructure such as Chainlink automation works
   2. Modify and expand Openzeppelin functionality if BAL is launched on a new chain
2. Manage and Operate on-chain permissions and protocol states
   1. Management and execution of operations permission BIPs
   2. Overseeing protocol health and
3. Manage and Operate DAO wallets incl. Treasury assets in collaboration with karpatkey
   1. vlAURA token management and evaluation of potential migration to a dedicated safe wallet incl. Activation of the recently reviewed safe module to automate relocking (BIP-715)
   2. Advising on building and execution of payloads for buffer management for the Karpatkey managed positions
   3. Regular sync points and alignment with @kpk on treasury management and optimization, including but not limited to permission granting and security impact of DAO funds
   4. Building of automation to propose / transmit transactions directly to a Safe after a pull-request in our operations repository has been reviewed / approved and merged (pilot already in production with vlAURA voting)
4. Secondary Reward Token Management and Distribution
   1. Operations UI
   2. Merkl rewards on v3
   3. Injector v2 infrastructure
5. Maintenance and expansion of Operations UI functionality
   1. Improve our current partner onboarding experience
   2. Expand injector v2 infrastructure functionality
   3. Take learnings and further improve and expand components based on partner feedback
   4. Advise BLabs on any potential partner onboarding UI experience in the main app
6. Oversight and advisory of the internal security committee council
   1. Overseeing chain state and management of the Emergency DAO multisig together with BLabs
   2. Liaison for on-chain security topics between Hypernative, BLabs and Maxis on-chain operations
   3. Monitoring and improvement of security measures to prevent malicious transaction execution on any of our multi-sigs
7. Omni-chain operations: Chainlink Automation & Gas Stations
   1. Further optimize Chainlink upkeep monitoring and automate LINK top-ups as well as the design and development of backup systems
   2. Incorporate more monitoring solutions into the operations UI
   3. Establish omni-chain gas station contracts to feed all relevant dependencies with ETH (or chain gas tokens) and LINK (gas for automation jobs)
8. Fee processing and distribution
   1. Own and execute on fee processing for all Balancer v3 deployments Balancer controls
   2. Oversee and execute on fee processing on Balancer v2, incl. Maintenance and improvements to our newly deployed protocol fee allocator v2 code-base (see GitHub repo)

Initiative 2: Growth

Co-Leads: @ZenDragon & @Mike_B
Team: @zekraken
Summary
The Balancer Maxis core focus has developed to include operational excellence, growth, and partner experience. As partners are onboarding into the Balancer ecosystem, the Maxis are tasked with streamlining the process and providing an enjoyable customer experience to retain as many users as possible. The end goal of the growth team is to simplify the process of onboarding and leveraging Balancer’s tech. We are dedicated to growing the product offerings Balancer has to meet market needs, communicating this to partners and the greater market, and finally utilizing these dominant products to grow the revenue and value proposition of the protocol.

Objectives:

1. Growth of Balancer V3 over the next 6 months to attain at a minimum 300M USD in TVL. The current growth trajectory points towards higher expectations, but linearly 300M over 6 months represents the current growth pace. This goal sets a realistic target which the Balancer Service Providers will aim to fulfill. While not in ETH terms, our DAO costs are denominated in USDC primarily so for now TVL goals will be as well.
2. Driving the DAO towards cash flow positive in terms of revenue taken to the DAO vs. costs of service providers. The DAO team composition is quite lean at this point, so our only option is to drive revenue into Balancer across the board to make this possible. Partnerships will do so via bringing in new business with the BDSP through structured configuration of pools, hooks, and incentive optimizations as needed.
   1. The definitive target is ⅓ of Balancer revenue or more to come from Balancer V3 by the end of this 6 month window. Due to large legacy pools such as Aave/wstETH and stickiness on V2, this is a fair target.
3. Owning the market to product development feedback loop lands on partnerships to relay what products are needed in order to drive further growth. This is demonstrated by the StableSurge hook’s recent success and the ability to understand partner needs becoming a tangible solution which increases business outcomes.
   1. Over the next 6 months the goal is to have new unique products launched on Balancer V3 attain over 50M in TVL. Including hooks such as StableSurge, MEV Capture, and any new invariants built in house by the Balancer Labs team.
   2. In addition, at least one new product deployed must be credited to this feedback loop process and an article on the initial demand to the deployment and go to market will be presented in the last month of this engagement.
4. Grow ecosystem and governance participation by onboarding 3 additional DAOs or entities to participate in the veBAL system at some capacity. This is to occur over the next 6 months and will include sparking renewed participation from any existing DAOs such as Gnosis or Aave. The goal is advancing the narrative around Balancer and aligning partners with the ecosystem.
5. Streamlining and Transforming Partner Experience. In tandem with the above initiatives led by @Xeonus and @gosuto to automate processes regarding reward distribution, payload creation, reviews, and partners interacting with front-end tools the goal is to have as hands off a process from pool creation to gauge proposal as possible. Historically Balancer SP’s have provided a “white glove” onboarding service to partners, which will continue, but in a different capacity. The tools in place will be utilized for partners to handle the entire process of onboarding in the majority of new prospects. During this time the partner management team will continue to assist, and drive feedback to the DevOps team to reach the final form of a 100% partner owned onboarding experience.
   1. This applies to pool, gauge, and injector creation with only minor necessity for hook configuration, amplification parameter changers, add_reward, and injector assistance in the cases where only governance or the Maxis have the ability to change an outcome.
   2. Furthermore reducing rate provider review lead time to a 2 week maximum in eve...