Arbitrum: The Aura Of Growth
Since launching on Arbitrum, Balancer has become a pivotal piece of DeFi infrastructure on the chain. From Liquid Staked Token tailored composable stable pools with inbuilt rate providers and liquidity flywheel mechanics to innovative 8020 tokenomics that have allowed protocols such as Radiant to flourish with $40 million in liquidity that would have otherwise been locked in single staked contracts, Balancer Technology has enabled growth on Arbitrum to bloom.
Today, with a new luminous liquidity layer and strategic ARB incentive program, we stand at the frontier of the next stage in Balancer’s evolutionary Arbitrum journey. Take a deep breath. Center yourself and align your chakras. A purple hue of energy is radiating into the Arbitrum ecosystem to allow growth to flourish.
Symbiotic Liquidity Growth
One of the fundamental goals for all blockchain networks is liquidity growth. Whether technical or biological, all ecosystems require growth to prosper. It’s this growth that powers progression, this progression that leads to evolution, and this evolution that kindles ecosystem prosperity. In the blockchain sphere, it all starts with network participants requiring efficient, decentralized, and nourishing opportunities to facilitate the ongoing growth of liquidity.
At the very core, Balancer believes that growth is exponentially multiplied when ecosystem participants work symbiotically versus competitively. Symbiosis trumps extraction. But it’s more than just an ethos, it’s ingrained in the code. Balancer architecture has been purposefully engineered to provide an interconnected hub of assets, all interwoven into a single contract. The Vault, Batch Swaps, Smart Order Router; there is a seamless and gas-efficient flow of liquidity and connections that constantly ebb and flows through this attuned base layer.
A Neural Tech Stack
Much like a decentralized mycelial network that churns away under the soil unbeknownst to all, it’s this interwoven architecture that nourishes growth and allows the beauty to flourish up above. On the surface, Balancer provides participants with optimized tools to plug into this interconnected, underground neural tech stack. Whether protocols leverage the plethora of base pool types or seek to innovate, build and implement their unique custom logic such as Gyroscope’s E-CLP, Balancer allows all network participants to seamlessly plug in and play.
If Balancer technology is the interconnected mycelial network, and protocols are flourishing microcosms, then Aura is a radiating, purple solar energy set to feed further growth. With the launch of Aura Finance onto Arbitrum, all Balancer participants now harness a newfound energy source that allows ecosystem-wide growth to blossom.
Aura Finance
Aura Finance is an aligned and symbiotic liquidity layer that plugs into and builds off the Balancer protocol. Just like Convex does to Curve, Aura acquires Balancer’s native governance token, veBAL, and plays a pivotal role in providing network participants with an additional composable layer to build liquidity and incentivize liquidity pools. Liquidity providers can stake Balancer Pool Tokens (BPTs) to earn AURA and BAL incentives, AURA holders can stake and participate in the veBAL voting market, and protocols can offer voting incentives to efficiently incentivize pools with BAL (and AURA) emissions.
Aura Finance hosts nearly $500M in TVL on mainnet and has established and helped fuel an interconnected cohort of protocol-protocol collaborations. From Liquid Staked Token powerhouses and cross-chain infrastructure providers to lending market and boosted integrations, Aura has played an innovative role in empowering the diverse Balancer ecosystem on Ethereum.
By launching on Arbitrum, all ecosystem participants now harness a source of energized liquidity tools to facilitate growth. But it doesn’t stop there. Entangled within the launch of Aura onto the network, Balancer is initiating an innovative and efficient ARB incentive program.
The Balancer ARB incentive program
For all external protocols looking to grow liquidity on Balancer, the voting market provides an efficient means to incentivize pools and instigate ongoing liquidity growth flywheels. Historically, the resultant emissions flowing to LPs via protocols depositing voting incentives have been greater than the voting incentive itself. This mechanism has allowed protocols to bootstrap liquidity through extremely efficient incentive strategies.
On Arbitrum, the Balancer DAO was allocated 3M ARB tokens via governance. 2 million of these will flow into the 33/33/33 ARB/BAL/AURA Liquidity Pool to facilitate swaps on the network. The remaining 1 million will flow to Liquidity Providers via an innovative incentive program strategy.
This incentive strategy will see ARB paired 1:1 as direct liquidity mining incentives with any voting incentives placed on the Aura finance voting market up to a maximum of 10k ARB per round. This means that on top of the portion of BAL incentives protocols participating in this voting market receive (which have historically been greater than the voting incentives placed), the Balancer DAO will also match voting incentives with direct ARB Liquidity Mining incentives. The full structure is outlined below.
- 10-round duration, aligning with Aura’s two-week cycle of voting incentive allocations.
- Max of 100k ARB per round. Any unspent ARB returns to the treasury.
- Each pool can have a max possible allocation of 10k ARB per round to prevent one or two pools from taking the majority share of this program.
- On each Wednesday/Thursday after Aura’s gauge voting snapshot, ARB will be allocated to each Arbitrum pool according to bribes placed in the most recent round on a 1:1 USD basis, subject to ARB caps mentioned above.
- This ARB will be emitted over two weeks.
- All voting markets are included — projects can choose where to bribe at their discretion. Bribes placed by Balancer under BIP-19 also count.
- Balancer Maxis will publish a spreadsheet detailing the ARB allocation every two weeks and allow at least 24h for community feedback before execution. They will make a forum thread for this purpose.
In collaboration with Aura Finance, Balancer Technology now provides one of the most efficient liquidity layers to fuel growth for Arbitrum participants.
Outro
Balancer is an ecosystem of diverse, active, and vigorous microcosms humming away in synchronicity. With the launch of Aura onto the network and an ARB incentive sprinkled into the mix, a newfound energy source is primed to fuel further growth and prosperity on Arbitrum. Efficient liquidity flywheels, protocol-protocol symbiosis, and exhilarating technological developments; get ready for the next stage in Balancer’s evolutionary Arbitrum journey.
