Balancer Is Setting The Base-Line
Secured by Ethereum and incubated by Coinbase, Base is an L2 roll-up built using the OP stack. Secure, low-cost, and builder-friendly, Base aims to bring the next billion users on-chain. As a core piece of DeFi infrastructure that provides users with one of the most flexible technology stacks in all of DeFi, Balancer has deployed today!
Balancer Is Expanding
DeFi Summer 2020 marked the emergence of an alternative system to TradFi — a boom in innovation that sparked the decentralized and open-source revolution we find ourselves exploring today. Fast forward to the present day, and it’s all about onboarding the next wave of participants into the decentralized financial world. Firmly established as one of DeFi’s bluechip projects on Ethereum, Balancer has embraced the opportunities of a multichain future and has successfully launched on two promising ecosystems this summer alone — Polygon zkEVM and Avalanche. Balancer’s third deployment marks an exciting exploration into new-found opportunities.
A Masterplan In The Making
How do the next 1 billion users onboard into DeFi? In 2016, Coinbase laid out its “secret master plan” to help foster an open financial system that increases global economic freedom. Each step would onboard more and more users into the blockchain world, culminating with phase 4 in which 1B+ new users would fluently harness the power of a global, decentralized, open financial system. 7 years later, we find ourselves on the cusp of this explosive final stage.
Incubated by Coinbase, Base is a blockchain solution built to be secure, low-cost, and builder-friendly. It aims to let builders develop apps that bring real utility to users and to let users easily access the benefits of the on-chain economy.
BASE
Built on the OP Stack, it remains decentralized, permissionless, and open source. It aims to build towards an Ethereum scaling solution that lets users easily bridge from L1 and other ecosystems.
In 2022, Coinbase developers began work with OP Labs on Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 4844. This innovative development introduces a new transaction type to Ethereum that accepts ephemeral “blobs” of data. Tailored for storing rollup data, EIP — 4884 is expected to achieve 10–100x cost savings on L2s, with the ultimate goal to make the crypto-economy more affordable for mainstream users. With a focus on reducing production time, the Coinbase team has helped to accelerate EIP4844 from “sometime in 2024” to summer 2023.
OP stack
Coinbase believes that the technological foundation of the crypto-economy should be open source, freely available, and not controlled or owned by any one company. This guiding principle has led to the implementation of a Layer 2 scaling solution built using the OP Stack. The Base team believes in the Superchain vision and “expects that there will be many rollups with significant activity, serving as “hubs” for different ecosystems… that gradually increase their interoperability until they form a “mesh” or “Superchain” that jointly scales Ethereum.” The OP Stack has provided Base with the tools for launching a production-quality Optimistic Rollup blockchain, with the future goal of fluently interconnecting to all other L2 chains.
By building Base, Coinbase is taking a major step towards creating accessible financial infrastructure for new users to enter the Web3 revolution.
Balancer — 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 together in Balance. 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.
The Balancer Ecosystem LaunchPad
The Balancer Ecosystem Launch Pad offers innovative solutions for ecosystems looking to develop network-wide liquidity growth. From interconnected boosted pools to next-generation 8020 governance models and innovative LST technology, Balancer is uniquely positioned to provide the optimal environment for the Base ecosystem to flourish and thrive.
Liquid Staked Tokens
Balancer technology provides a unique approach to facilitating liquidity growth for Yield Bearing tokens. Composable Stable Pools are designed with an inbuilt rate provider that constantly queries the blockchain to update the tokens to their correct ratios and feeds yield accrual back to liquidity providers. This innovative technology also unlocks an efficient Liquid Staked Token incentive flywheel, allowing Balancer to take a fee on the token’s benefits and integrate it into a core pool mechanism, igniting a flywheel of efficient and ongoing liquidity growth. With the latest technology, Base participants harness one of the most efficient hubs to accelerate LST growth across the ecosystem.
8020 Tokenomics
8020 pools have proven to be the ultimate sweet spot for governance positions with minimized Impermanent Loss and asymmetric upside all while unlocking an efficient means to build native token liquidity for protocols. All protocols that adopt 8020 tokenomics for governance rapidly reduce the fragmentation of incentivization programs, via unlocking a focal source of native token liquidity. With the launch of Balancer onto Base a whole new cohort of protocols can now join the 8020 Initiative and take advantage of the most advanced governance model in the game.
Boosted Pools
Boosted Pools are primed to enable ecosystem-wide liquidity growth and capital efficiency on Base. Intertwining the capabilities of a standard liquidity pool with single-sided yield markets into one powerful LP position, Boosted Pools unlock the next stage of “active” capital. In a typical LP, less than 20% of the liquidity facilitates swaps. Boosted Pools wrap and route idle liquidity to external yield-generating protocols, unlocking a source of sustainable yield incentives for users.
Outro
The launch of Base is set to spur on the next leg of growth for the decentralized economy and usher in an era of accessibility/adoption for the wider crypto community. The launch of Balancer on Base aims to accelerate the expansion of DeFi on the Base ecosystem across a number of key areas; Boosted Pools, LSTs, ve8020, lending markets, and more.
Flexible. Efficient. Adaptable. The future of Finance is open source.
Based.
