FIP-92: Vote-escrow the DAO's BAL to veBAL

Status: Draft

Author(s): @Eswak

Summary

Vote-lock the protocol’s BAL inside the new veBAL system.
This vote is used to determined the amount of BAL locked.

Context / Motivation
Balancer is releasing their new tokenomics, similar to Curve, where the new token that hold governance power is veBAL (vote-escrowed LP token of the 80 BAL / 20 WETH pool).

See announcement:

And more details here:
https://snapshot.org/#/balancer.eth/proposal/0x9fe19c491cf90ed2e3ed9c15761c43d39fd1fb732a940aba8058ff69787ee90a

The protocol currently holds the equivalent of ~271k BAL:

  • 261,146 inside the BAL/WETH pool (20% of the LP position is actually WETH)
  • 8,525 on the BAL/WETH PCVDeposit
  • 2,000 on the FEI/WETH PCVDeposit

Notable difference with Curve: the locking period for “veBAL” is maximum 1 year, and “veBAL” is actually a LP token, not a simple wrapper around BAL.

Specification
Re-use the contract used to manage veANGLE, in order to manage veBAL.

Voting
I suggest an approval vote, the option with the most approval gets proposed onchain:

  • Vote-lock 100% of protocol BAL
  • Vote-lock 80% of protocol BAL
  • Vote-lock 50% of protocol BAL
  • More discussions needed

Feel free to suggest another way to vote, but I think we should go to snapshot this week.


In my opinion, locking 100% makes the most sense, because holding naked BAL/WETH BPTs doesn’t provide much utility & dilutes the DAO’s meta-governance power. The main reason why the DAO should lock less than 100% is if there is a plan to sell (there is not, afaik), or if a reserve was kept in case Convex (or a fork) launch a similar product to what they do for CRV/FXS. But it this case, the DAO could vote-lock 100%, and reserve future rewards to allocate in such protocol.

8 Likes

Locking 100% seems optimal to me as we can point rewards towards our own pools, which is more profitable than accepting bribes anyways. Also, if we lock in Convex we will be forced to hold CVX to vote instead of veBAL, which causes us to be exposed to their entire treasury (including CRV and FXS).

3 Likes

this seems like a great move. I would support getting in on this with 100% protocol BAL ASAP

3 Likes

Easy yes on the 100% vote-lock

1 Like

moving to last call!

To what address should the veBAL PCVDeposit delegate to on Snapshot ?

Snapshot uses message signing, so it has to be an EoA. On-chain votes/proposals can be done on a multisig, but for snapshot the contract can’t sign messages.

I’d like to propose myself (eswak.eth) because I follow what happens on Balancer & can relay relevant votes here, but a community member would probably be better.

Snapshot delegatee can be changed anytime by the OA multisig.

4 Likes

100% is the way to go.

1 Like

With your work on FIP-70 and FIP-90, I support delegating to you. It’s important that we have someone actively invested in metagovernance for Balancer, and I find no problem with it being a Fei Labs member as compared to a community delegate, especially since it’s revocable via OA (soon to be the Tribal Council).

1 Like

Snapshot is live: Snapshot

1 Like