Exchange Gas Reimbursements
Update: this program now covers all swaps between any two eligible tokens. Full details at: https://forum.balancer.finance/t/proposal-expand-the-exchange-gas-reimbursement-to-all-whitelisted-tokens/799
Balancer v1 was designed with security and explicit-ness in mind which unfortunately comes at the expense of higher gas costs. With the explosion of DeFi this past year gas has continually become more of a hinderance for traders and new users trying to access this ecosystem. Balancer v2 is on the way and set to improve this situation immensely, but in the meantime we want to encourage users to give our improved exchange UI a try and help onboard new users to trade that can’t afford the current gas meta.
With this in mind, the Balancer community has approved a 30,000 BAL budget for a gas reimbursement program. The pilot will run for four weeks starting today (January 25th) and will partially reimburse gas costs on select pairs for transactions made directly via the Balancer Exchange Proxy smart contract. Based on previous weeks’ transactions and gas prices, reimbursements would average between 40% and 50% and could reach as much as 95% of the gas costs!
This program aims to make Balancer a more attractive venue when a user is deciding where to make their trade while gas prices continue to be a decisive factor. Because it only partially covers gas costs (with very specific caps to prevent attempts at gaming the system) and doesn’t cover trading fees, the program does not incentivize wash trading or trading any more than a user was initially planning on doing.
To start the reimbursements will only cover swaps between any two of the following tokens: WETH, WBTC, USDC, DAI, BAL. Also, only swaps done directly through the UI (EOA -> Exchange Proxy) will be covered to specifically target retail traders and not arbitrage bots. The plan is to iterate and expand on the initial reimbursements if the trial is successful.
The full details of the program can be found at: https://forum.balancer.finance/t/proposal-balancer-exchange-gas-reimbursement/705 and visit the exchange at https://balancer.exchange
