Balancer STIP Program Updates #4

Balancer Bi-Weekly Update 12-1-2024

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Recap of the Previous Two Weeks

ARB Received Last Disbursement: 171,429 (KYC delays resulted in collecting 2 biweekly payments at the start of the program, details in change section below)

**ARB Utilized as Incentives in the Last Two Weeks: 205,249

Contracts incentivized over the last 2 weeks: A CSV of incentived along with details about $ARB flows to each one and how they were calculated can be found here. These amounts of payment were queued and the required 171,429 $ARB sent for payment by this multisig transaction executed at 15:01 UTC on Friday Decemeber 29th. These payments were be streamed to stakers in the gauge by the injector and the gauge system for 2 weeks, ending today on January 12th.

recipientGaugeAddr symbol distribution
0x2eB5661002b68EBE887d29d415c3A3b52536912C wstETH/rETH/cbETH 26487.22887
0xcf9f895296F5e1D66a7D4dcf1d92e1B435E9f999 RDNT-WETH 20571.48
0x40F6bE0b26B229C4C3b2C3344e91f8eEe22a62fF plsRDNT-Stable 20571.48
0xd6B875d62c2661eaB66472F36c672e4B512f1135 rETH-WETH-BPT 18267.7859
0xcF853F14EF6111435Cb39c0C43C66366cc6300F1 50GOLD-25USDC-25WSTETH 16457.184
0xa14453084318277b11d38FbE05D857A4f647442B 4POOL-BPT 15333.54932
0xeF767E740D83d410794519c2F93Db32e44359a5C 50MAGIC-50USDC 12512.86476
0xfC745035F31BCbaEb2D1a89aA9171495c671F6cE ankrETH/wstETH-BPT 11314.19744
0x050fBe33699E56B577c3D6f090eCE9870A0966bd sFRAX/4POOL 11024.82356
0x260cbb867359a1084eC97de4157d06ca74e89415 wstETH-WETH-BPT 10928.79902
0xd956246EA5b06DEa930F0A7feC1FFf000436e3f2 DOLA/USDC BPT 8908.531071
0x138E37c3885169DB38e046D5c814C0e95566566c wstETH-4POOL 5625
0x34BDBEcd3B911a8DCB17aC68B961a8D16db52673 wstETH/rETH/sfrxETH 4589.955902
0x159be31493C26F8F924b3A2a7F428C2f41247e83 GOLD-BAL-AURA-wstETH 4114.296
0x82d2c7B67Eaa5028c89BE86CeA8e1DF5bd2119A1 55auraBal-45wsteth 3675.066969
0x089a2E069700B0f2B16f69A6e02b01818ce22e7d D2D-rETH 3592.772756
0xD7a5122a4e88EC9fBE94301A0Bff6114ddFe5d4B STAR/USDC-BPT 3482.52921
0x972539E9d340a915775C004715f286a166F067Fd 80OVN/20wUSD+ 3467.376978
0x011417BBED6FC9cefF36C032D431b0eFcBA7f8B3 50tBTC-50WETH 1413.201779
0x2162abD00312a0496B4b72b20A6790Cc07268A25 Savvy TriCrypto Pool 982.5104612
0xb438c6cc53315FfA3fcD1bc8b27d6c3155b0B56A 2BTC 894.3150643
0x574c2146091Cced305A7ABa82d097DE36b736fac 50DFX-50WETH 795.8711718
0x96056DF5a61B758005a219a052D72085C45df92c 80PAL-20OHM 703.979768

Contract address label Form completed for all addresses: Yes

ARB left over: 68,571.6

Plan for leftover ARB: The leftover ARB was planned to be paid out over the following rounds as described in prior reports by distributing 205,714.8 for the remaining periods. However, because the short term incentive program distribution time will be extended, the amounts will be spread out evenly over the remaining periods. This will result in 82285.3 ARB being distributed per round until March 8. This final injection would then last until March 22 for ARB streamign to close out Balancer’s STIP cycle.

During the last distribution Balancer has been scaling up in liquidity in every facet of the dex. Primarily yield bearing assets such as ETH LSTs and stablecoins, as well as providing a hub for projects to deploy governance tokens with unique nuance for incentive programs will be outlined in detail in the summary section. The core purpose of Balancer’s STIP strategy remains to grow the total amount of yield bearing assets on Arbitrum while enabling new value add projects an ease of access to join the ecosystem.

Emphasizing the points above, the pools which provide the highest amounts of fees for Balancer are directed majority of BAL incentives, and therefore ARB, via our core pool cycle. This will continue to propel stand out pools to scale up as incentives coincide with key metrics for both the Arbitrum foundation and Balancer. While incentives will decrease in total to spread out the ARB, the concentration will be directed towards the top performing pools.

Summary of incentives: Incentives were dispersed based on the CSV above, which shows where the ARB was sent based upon the plan outlined in Balancer’s FINAL STIP Round 1 framework. The dynamic boost of higher fee pools has taken more shape pushing incentives towards the higher performing pools in terms of fees earned. The efficiency of ARB incentive disitribution is becoming more efficient every round as the more profitable pools gain more traction over time.

On December 28th, the TVL of Balancer was 131M, volume, LST TVL, and fees were at all time highs and we once again have raised the bar. Both Aura and Beefy have made fast tracking liquidity providers into high growth positions for the protocol and ecosystem mcuh smoother. More and more large players are joining Arbitrum and they are choosing to do so on Balancer because of the way incenvites are directed towards the highest value add projects organically.

The focus has been in every report the largest pools to track metrics of their growth, and which new one’s emerge over time. RDNT/WETH is still growing as the market rallies after a jump from 60MM to 74MM TVL last round it has increased again to 75MM. The last two rounds have average daily volumes 1.15, and 1.19MM this round has risen to 1.97MM daily volume. Looking at the same liquid staking derivative pools cbETH/rETH/wstETH, WETH/rETH, wstETH/WETH and ankrETH/wstETH have reached all time highs once again. This is a combination of slightly growing total underlying ETH, and market upticking in dollar denominated value. The sfrxETH/wstETH/rETH was new last round, and we highlighted TVL at 1MM being an achievement. In the previous epochs time the pool has hit 4.16MM TVL, a 4x in 2 weeks roughly. While the growth is incredible, we do expect it to continue slightly, and level out as the incentives meet fair market conditions.

During the last two rounds had the ETH LST TVL climb from 37.15MM to 47.5MM and now Balancer holds just under 59MM TVL for this same set of assets at the time of writing (stable pools plus weighted portions). Volume has also increase from 38MM to 47.5MM. As we have been stating; the best pools for the ecosystem scale up due to the system and this is proof that these assets continue to get the support they need to result in net positive additions for the Arbitrum ecosystem.

Balancer has chosen to support several pools for routing by dedicating fixed ARB incentives on the 4POOL and the 4POOL/wstETH pair. The 4POOL pool has seen a large jump in TVL going from 5.15MM to 9.39MM in the last two weeks. The core contributors at Balancer chose to reduce the swap fee to make the pool more competitive with the concentrated liqudity markets and this increase volume and fee flows vadtly. Volume of the last two rounds were 1.9 and 2.2MM per day; the pool sits at 6.8 MM in volume per day over the last two weeks. The 4POOL/wstETH pool is down in TVL from 1.2MM to 870k and ultimatley the Balancer Maxis have decided the direct support of this pool should be removed as we plan to elongate the STIP ARB beyond the initial end date. The 4POOL while performing will have it’s direct incentives migrated to the sFRAX/4POOL which offers LPs the yield bearing exposure of sFRAX while also acting as a way to incentivize diverse stablecoin routing. This is a more bang for Arbitrum’s buck solution which we are happy to utilize.

The previosu report highlighted two pools Balancer expected to be rising stars over this round. They were sFRAX/4POOL and sFRAX/wstETH. While the wstETH pairing has not yet been scaled up, the sFRAX/4POOL has just begun to fire on all cylinders. Beefy and the FRAX teams have contributed to making this a peak performing pool which will capture every ounce of capital efficiency Balancer’s unique architecture can offer to LPs. The pool has easily gone from sub 300k to 3MM TVL and undobutedly will increase in value, volume, and fees over the next epoch. This pool will be a repeat offender of the highlight list for next round.

An honorable mention in the continuous growth of Balancer in the Arbitrum ecosystem is Notional Finance who recently launched v3 on Arbitrum. Their leveraged vaults are gaining a large amount of traction and we are excited for the synergies from integration to result in inflows and opportunities for everyone in the Arbitrum ecosystem.

Stats from Openblock Dashboard:

ARB_STIP_Stats_11_1.png

Additional Info / Disclosures to Multisig:

  • Tags for each contract address can be found in the csv above.
  • See previous report for any comments on the current payment schematic of ARB to align with the deadline of the incentive cycle end proposed by the Arbitrum Foundation.
  • Details can be seen on this sheet

STATS

Link to Dashboard showing metrics: Balancer Arbitrum Liquidity Growth Program dashboard

Average daily TVL: $135,081,641

Average daily transactions: 711

Average daily volumes: $16,388,442

Number of unique user addresses: 3420

Transaction fees: Average daily: $15,051

Plan For the Next Two Weeks

Amount of ARB to be distributed: 82285.3

Contracts that will be incentivized: Contracts to be incentivied are outlined in this csv, subject to change as more gauges are added to the veBAL system on Arbitrum.

recipientGaugeAddr symbol distribution
0x050fBe33699E56B577c3D6f090eCE9870A0966bd sFRAX/4POOL 11490.14692
0x2eB5661002b68EBE887d29d415c3A3b52536912C wstETH/rETH/cbETH 8946.474951
0x40F6bE0b26B229C4C3b2C3344e91f8eEe22a62fF plsRDNT-Stable 8228.53
0xcf9f895296F5e1D66a7D4dcf1d92e1B435E9f999 RDNT-WETH 8228.53
0x260cbb867359a1084eC97de4157d06ca74e89415 wstETH-WETH-BPT 6804.433923
0xcF853F14EF6111435Cb39c0C43C66366cc6300F1 50GOLD-25USDC-25WSTETH 6582.824
0xeF767E740D83d410794519c2F93Db32e44359a5C 50MAGIC-50USDC 6546.610215
0xd6B875d62c2661eaB66472F36c672e4B512f1135 rETH-WETH-BPT 5767.291488
0xfC745035F31BCbaEb2D1a89aA9171495c671F6cE ankrETH/wstETH-BPT 4884.125024
0xd956246EA5b06DEa930F0A7feC1FFf000436e3f2 DOLA/USDC BPT 3239.493465
0x34BDBEcd3B911a8DCB17aC68B961a8D16db52673 wstETH/rETH/sfrxETH 2977.621604
0x089a2E069700B0f2B16f69A6e02b01818ce22e7d D2D-rETH 2393.794263
0x159be31493C26F8F924b3A2a7F428C2f41247e83 GOLD-BAL-AURA-wstETH 1645.706
0x82d2c7B67Eaa5028c89BE86CeA8e1DF5bd2119A1 55auraBal-45wsteth 1245.426364
0x972539E9d340a915775C004715f286a166F067Fd 80OVN/20wUSD+ 900.7845013
0x011417BBED6FC9cefF36C032D431b0eFcBA7f8B3 50tBTC-50WETH 766.3257337
0xb438c6cc53315FfA3fcD1bc8b27d6c3155b0B56A 2BTC 500.8380213
0x574c2146091Cced305A7ABa82d097DE36b736fac 50DFX-50WETH 395.8120468
0x2162abD00312a0496B4b72b20A6790Cc07268A25 Savvy TriCrypto Pool 266.6670879
0xc3522B0A58d9f12f33E542FC3c3C051b4AF01c83 DUSD-4POOL-BPT 239.1645449
0x96056DF5a61B758005a219a052D72085C45df92c 80PAL-20OHM 161.1945332
0xa14453084318277b11d38FbE05D857A4f647442B 4POOL-BPT 73.50531601

Contract address label Form completed for all addresses: Yes

Mechanism for distribution incentives: Distributions will be done every week via Balancer DAO’s ARB injector contract by sending direct incentives to the gauges of the respective pools in the Balancer ecosystem.

Summary of incentives plan: The incentives structure will continue to be carried out as planned since the original awarding of the STIP. As new pools join the ecosystem there will be competition between the most efficient ones on a fee per emission basis to determine where the majority of incentives are directed. More efficient pools receive more incentives and over time facilitate the optimal use of ARB for the liquidity hosted by Balancer on Arbitrum. As new strong contendors join the ecosystem the competition becomes more fierce between pools, ultimatley leading to more TVL, fees, and diversity on the platform.

The top performing pools will continue to receive the lion’s share of incentives. Pools with yield bearing liquidity, such as plsRDNT as a top yield earner will receive more emissions over time. The sFRAX/4POOL as mentioned prior will grow rapidly as fixed incentives as well as outside incentives are pointed towards it from all the parties involved. Frax will also likely choose to scale up the sFRAX/FRAX pool which was recently deployed.

Summary of changes to the original plan: Bi-weekly distributions will be scaled back as mentioned earlier in the report. The total value of ARB per round will be reduced from 205714.8 per round to 82285.3. This will make the program last through the first half of March. In the previous report the optimization BIP to strengthen top performing pool’s allocations was put into affect, hence the ongoing improvement of efficiency over the previous and upcoming rounds. BIP-522.

The fixed incentives which were initially directed at the 4POOL and wstETH/4POOL will now be pointed towards the sFRAX/4POOL and used to spread across the new timeline for distribution. The sFRAX/wstETH pool was planned to receive a portion of these, but due to the recent elongaiton of the program will no longer be done.