The Balancer Report: Boosted Pool Magic

Boosted Pools have been a Balancer staple for a while! They fuel ecosystem growth and serve as a testament to innovation.
How do they work? What’s “boosted” and why Aave’s role in all this is crucial? Let’s dive in and find out! (+ catch up on the latest ecosystem news, protocol stats and more!)

Published in

Balancer Protocol

5 min readJun 26, 2023

Boosted Pools have been live for quite some time: they were launched at the end of 2021 in partnership with Aave and aimed to address a fundamental shortcoming that affects all “regular” pools: idle liquidity.

Why is this important? Well, it’s not an issue, but all regular (=non-boosted) pools are not as efficient as they could be.. At any given time, only 20% or less of the pool’s total liquidity is actually used for swaps, while the rest doesn’t generate anything beyond softening price impact.

What if something could be done to change that? That’s where boosted pools take the spotlight! They use protocols like Aave to generate additional yield by putting wrapped versions of the tokens they hold to work.

This brings a number of benefits:

Deep liquidity
Efficient swap routing
High capital efficiency
Boosted yield

Another great thing about boosted pools is that other ecosystem participants can use them! Take this wstETH/ma3wETH pool as an example: it pairs wstETH with “ma3wETH, which supplies on Morpho’s Aave V3 Optimizer to earn additional yield.”. The pool also brings in additional benefits in the form of bribes.

Boosted Pools are here to stay, and Balancer’s composability, paired with Aave’s tech makes them accessible to everyone.

It’s time for ecosystem news!

First things first: Aura Finance is now live on Arbitrum! This is a major step in Balancer’s L2 expansion as it brings one of the most exciting ecosystem protocols to one of the biggest Layer 2 blockchains. Arbitrum can now benefit from this new and efficient liquidity layer.
Balancer’s 3M ARB grant will go towards supporting this deployment: 2M tokens “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.”

Polygon DeFi’s mega space was a big success! Balancer’s Polygon pools have almost $100M in TVL, and the recent zkEVM deployment highlights the role that Polygon plays in the Balancer ecosystem. You can listen to the recording here.

In other news, the fee collection mechanism has been disabled for some pools as a precautionary measure. No funds are at risk, you could find more details here.

And to wrap this segment up: Balancer continues to maintain its status as a leading LST liquidity destination, here’s the latest weekly update.

HiddenHand incentives can as always be explored here, the current round ends on June 29, 2023.

Balancer: TVL and Stats — Defilytica

Balancer’s Total TVL across all networks is sitting at $1.12bn. And it is distributed as follows:

The Total Mainnet TVL is $914mm.

Polygon TVL is at $90.0mm.

Arbitrum TVL is at $87.5mm.

Gnosis TVL is at $27.9mm.

And finally, Balancer on Optimism by Beethoven X sits at $27.7mm TVL.

As for our liquid wrappers, they are under the following parity to veBAL:

This section will list the top three expected pools to receive most of the next period’s emissions. Voting is open for four more days, and the next period is scheduled to start on Thursday at 00:00 am UTC.

Mainnet — graviAURA / auraBAL / WETH — currently at 16.19%.
Mainnet — BADGER / rETH — currently at 10.00%
Mainnet — rETH / WETH — currently at 7.71%

You can find an overview of the current LM incentives on the Balancer Mainnet below:

This round is ending with the next 7 Snapshot votes:

Stay tuned for this week’s Governance Recap to learn about the results and their implications.

This week Dubstard brings another set of warnings:

Do not open any links sent to you in DMs from any one pretending to be a “mod”, “admin” “staff member” and etc.
Do not message anybody offering help if you DMs them first, those are scammers.
Do not click any links on twitter, even from “verified” accounts. Why? Because anyone can buy a “verified” account and post scams with it.

Remember, Balancer operates primarily under the following domain: https://balancer.fi/

Balancer has a flourishing ecosystem. You’re welcome to contribute to it whether you’re a dev, a community person, or a graphic designer! We strive toward onboarding every new member in a smooth and personalized way.

Join the Ballers and start your Balancer journey now: http://discord.balancer.fi/

Are you looking for a grant? Learn more here.

If you speak Spanish, make sure you give Balancer Español a follow. And if you speak Portuguese, follow Balancer Brasil.

Website | Twitter | Discord

This article is for informational and educational purposes only. It should not be construed as investment or trading advice or a solicitation or recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any digital assets. Transactions on the blockchain are speculative. Carefully consider and accept all risks before taking action.

The Balancer Report: Boosted Pool Magic

Written by Balancer Ballers