PR with Payload

https://github.com/BalancerMaxis/multisig-ops/pull/1757

Enable Gauge for USDT/USDQ/USDR boosted pool (Ethereum)

Summary

This is a proposal to enable an uncapped Balancer gauge for the USDT/USDQ/USDR boosted pool on Ethereum. This pool could be of strategic value to Balancer by becoming the nexus of liquidity for USDR and USDQ, new MiCA-compliants stablecoin using Tether Hadron technology. Moreover, liquidity is boosted by being invested in Steakhouse branded Morpho vaults.

While there is already seed liquidity, implementing the gauge will help Balancer grow the TVL even further and gain a strategic first mover advantage for the liquidity hub of those stablecoins.

References

• Balancer USDT/USDQ/USDR boosted pool
• Balancer gauge https://etherscan.io/address/0x8f1e24671e90bb3e43adaedf79a5c6e42ed74f72
• Steakhouse Website
• Underlying Morpho Vaults: steakUSDTlite, steakUSDQ, steakUSDR
• Stablecoins: USDT, USDQ (Whitepaper), USDR (Whitepaper)

Protocol Description

USDQ and USDR are MiCA-compliant $-denominated stablecoins issued by Quantoz (Netherland) and StablR (Malta). Quantoz is supervised by the De Nederlansche Bank (DNB) while StablR is supervised by the Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA). Mandatory whitepapers from MiCA are given in the references.

Steakhouse branded vaults are Morpho vaults version 1.1 operated by Carniciera Tropical (read the disclaimers). They have wstETH, WBTC and XAUt as admissible collateral, they all are bluechip and have deep liquidity.

Motivation

Stablr USDR and Quantoz USDQ are new MiCA-compliant stablecoins. They are both based on the Tether Hadron tokenization platform and are currently mainly traded on Bitfinex. They have both received investment from Tether (Quantoz, StablR). As USDT is getting removed from listing in Europe due to MiCA regulation, we believe current European USDT users will have to migrate to new stablecoin, and might want to use those stablecoins based on Tether technology when interacting with MiCA regulated platforms. Therefore, there might be a strong need to be able to swap from those stablecoin to USDT to explore the strong network effect that USDT enjoys in DeFi.

To be part of this trend, we believe the Balancer community should strongly compete to become the primary hub for those stablecoin. This boosted pool leverage Balancer in two ways:

• Using both USDQ and USDR against USDT in the pool require less capital and enable deeper liquidity
• Using Morpho vaults underneath provide a better capital efficiency

Specifications

1. Governance: USDT, USDQ and USDR are centralized stablecoin issuers. Morpho is a set of immutable smart-contracts. The owner of Morpho vaults (Carniciera Tropical) can add/remove collateral types but it has to go through a 7-day timelock during which a Aragon DAO (“the guardian”), which regroups all vault liquidity providers, can veto the decision.
2. Oracles: The morpho markets relies on the following Chainlink oracles: WBTC/BTC, BTC/USD, XAU/USD, stETH/USD, USDT/USD . All relevant rate provider contracts have been reviewed by Balancer’s integrations team here: https://github.com/balancer/code-review/pull/247
3. Audits: Morpho v1.1 audit reports
4. Centralization vector: Carniciera Tropical is the owner of the Morpho vaults, but as explained, the vaults are non-custodial as any LP can trigger a veto on the significance decisions.
5. Market history: All markets are quite vanilla with the exception of having some new stablecoins (USDR and USDQ) with limited history and liquidity. Nonetheless, they are MiCA regulated.
6. Value: The pool is intended to be the main liquidity for USDQ and USDR, two MiCA stablecoins.

Technical Specifications:

Transaction: The Balancer Maxi LM Multisig eth:0xc38c5f97B34E175FFd35407fc91a937300E33860 will interact with the GaugeAdderv4 at 0x5DbAd78818D4c8958EfF2d5b95b28385A22113Cd and call the addGauge function with the following arguments:

gauge(address): 0x8F1e24671e90bb3E43ADaedf79a5C6E42Ed74f72

gaugeType(string): Ethereum