[BIP-573] Fund Balancer Grants for Q2 2024

PR with Payload

https://github.com/BalancerMaxis/multisig-ops/pull/870

TL;DR

With V3 development ongoing, the grants program requests full funding to target new V3 integrations. This quarter’s focus will be to find, fund and launch projects with Balancer V3 to help boost wide adoption.

There are no major changes to the program and the committee will continue to focus on funding in line with the findings in the historical assessment report. Main points:

• Funding duration 3 months from April 1st to June 30th, 2024.
• Funding for new grantees - 75k BAL
• Funding categories identified in 2023 Q4 Program Recap
• Attract more projects to build on V3 and port over pools from V2
• Run V3 bounty program (details to come closer to V3 launch)

With the recovery of funds from stale grants and an increase in BAL price, a small amount of funding is requested to top up the treasury (currently 68,190 BAL uncommitted) to

1. 75,000 BAL for new grantees (6,809 BAL top up)
2. 38,400 USDC for committee/support (29,400 USDC top up)

As always, we welcome comments and recommendations from the community on how to better develop the Balancer grants program.

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Service Provider Name: Balancer Grants

Leader(s): Burns, with committee members John Grant, Mike B, Steve0xp and Zen Dragon.

Pledge to abide by the DAO’s Code of Conduct 1 (or link to your own): Yes

Pledge to abide by the Accountability Guidelines: Yes

In accordance with the Balancer DAO Accountability Guidelines. This will include the Grant’s Committee:

• Developing a monthly report detailing key objective progress which is posted to the Balancer Forum and Medium
• Attending and presenting during the Baller weekly meeting (mandatory attendance by at least 1 representative)

Domain of Operation

After 11 waves of funding and a recap over the last quarter, this proposal seeks to continue the grants program as per BIP-517 with increased funding to support the release of Balancer’s V3. The program will continue to offer up to $100K USD in BAL tokens per grant supporting the Balancer Protocol's mission to become a leading DeFi liquidity source, catering to both short-term and one-off projects, as an alternative to the Foundation SP model's focus on long-term and higher-cost engagements.

The Balancer Grants DAO Service Provider will be operated by the Grants Committee, a group of diverse and experienced Balancer contributors. More details on the Grants Committee are below.

Following on from the quarter of reflections and subsequent report and recommendations, the grants program will be focused on:

1. Continue to mentor and deliver with existing grantees

The program currently has 4 live grantees building assorted integrations, novel use cases for Balancer pools and educational resources. This is down from 10 at the beginning of Wave 11 with 2 new grantees being approved this wave. The committee has assisted projects to complete their milestones and intervened where the project has gone stale to recover funds for future grants. These projects total ~$157k of committed funds yet to be paid for outstanding milestones with >$100k in soon to be approved grants. These can be reviewed on our Finalized and Live Grants Notion Page.

Deliverables: On-going support/maangement, monthly reports, coordination between Balancer entities.

2. Fund projects dedicated to increasing adoption of Balancer V3

With Balancer V3 launching in early Q2 2024, grants will play a significant role in incentivising projects to:

• Integrate Balancer V3.
• Create educational content, tooling and docs to lower barriers to entry for teams building on V3
• Create new use cases with Balancer custom pools
• Bounties for highly active community members providing dev support, incentivising integrations for analytics sites etc

Deliverables: Live Grant assessment sheet, monthly reports, weekly meetings

3. Funding categories

Across these avenues of focus, categories to direct funding are:

Category	Why / Why not
Analytics	Continuously improving analytics and encouraging existing projects to include Balancer drives volume to the protocol. Clear value.
Custom Pool Types	Custom pool types have the highest potential value to Balancer but are risky. These projects create new use cases and showcase Balancer technology.
Education / Tooling	Very important to make Balancer more user/dev friendly and drive adoption of building and investing in the platform.
Research	Research has been generally avoided after early failed proposals. Recommendation is to revisit funding research as optimizations or new use cases may prove valuable. Risky with low likelihood of payout but high potential payout.
Swap Aggregators	Swap aggregators create more revenue streams. Strategic grants may be considered.
Wrappers / Infrastructure	Can lower barriers to entry for other projects looking to integrate with Balancer and provide additional revenue streams
Yield Aggregators	Only with a direct value calculation. There are generally sufficient incentives for yield aggregators. With no yield bearing assets, this is not worth funding. If the aggregator has the potential to bring high volume and TVL of yield bearing assets, then a value calculation can be made.

Grants Committee

The Grants Committee consists of dedicated Balancer contributors with strong analytical and support backgrounds. The committee remains an equal democracy with no person having a greater authority on what is approved or not. We rely on individuals’ expertise in different areas to help make informed decisions.

Burns - Committee Coordination Lead

John Grant - Committee Member/Mentor

MikeB - Committee Member/Mentor

Steve - Committee Member/Mentor

Zen Dragon- Committee Member/Mentor

The committee has the ability to onboard/offboard members as individual circumstances change throughout the quarter between funding proposals. Given the authority to approve and distribute grant funding, the committee can also self manage members within the approved budget.

The Grants Committee will continue to work closely with Balancer Labs, Ecosystem SPs and Ballers to amplify and support grantees.

By having a dedicated and diverse group of committee members and proactively working together with other ecosystem partners, Balancer Grants are set out to be one of the most effective grants programs in DeFi.

Previous Performance

As a committee we have shown ourselves as:

• Diligent assessors of grant applications with intimate understanding of the DAO and protocol.
• Trusted to find and manage grantees building on core Balancer code alongside Balancer Labs.
• Fairly recover funds from stale grantees when no longer relevant with 6 grants over the last 2 quarters saving ~30k BAL
• Prudent with spending to maintain the grants treasury and limit BAL expenditure
• Supporting grantees to completion by connecting with the resources required
• Transparent in the assessment process and providing frequent information to the community about current grantee progress

Total application submissions and approvals:

Length of Engagement and Budget breakdown

This budget contains all costs for the full operations of the Balancer Grants SP for the period April 1st to June 30th, 2024. Unallocated resources will be kept to offset the next budget request if successful. Due to the inconsistent nature of grants and the associated workload, grants team members will self-assess their level of contribution against defined Tiers each month to determine their compensation which is reviewed by the grants committee.

Tiers are:

Committee Lead - $8,000 USD paid in USDC - mentor and provide support/coordination for all grantee teams, administration of grants docs, RFP development, prepare and present monthly reports/community calls, wave round up, grantee announcements, budget preparation and SP proposals, .

Tier 1 Contributor - $600 USD paid in BAL - contribute to weekly grants meeting, grantee support and on-going assessments

Tier 2 Contributor - $1,200 USD paid in BAL - As per Tier 1 plus follow up calls for grant applications, mentor at least 1 grantee, RFP development/future grants program planning,.

Tier 3 Contributor - $1,800 USD paid in BAL as per Tier 1 plus mentor 2-4 low assistance grantees or 1-2 high assistance grantees or medium involvement developing 2023 grants program.

Tier 4 Contributor - $3,000 USD paid in BAL - as per Tier 1 Contributor plus mentor 5+ low assistance grantees or 3+ high assistance grantees or high involvement developing 2023 grants program.

Expense	Amount in BAL/USD	Description
Q2 Grants	75,000 BAL	To be rewarded to grantees based on milestones following the full Grants review process. For sub $5k USD contributions a light review process will be utilized. Includes buffer for current approved grants in $USD to be paid in BAL.
1 Grants lead	$8k x 3 months = $24k USDC	The Grants Lead Role takes ownership of the establishment and operations of the Balancer Grant processes. The lead is responsible for coordinating with Committee Members, scheduling and hosting meetings, carrying out KYC/compliance due diligence, maintaining Medium and Notion pages and leading the post grants report.
4 committee members	$ 1,200 USD average x 4 x 3 months = $14,400 USDC	As per tiers. Allowance for one of each contributor Tier per mont...