Welcome back to another Chakra Alignment, "DeFi Renaissance" edition. We'll take a quick look at what's been happening in the Aura ecosystem over the past few weeks.

auraBAL Buybacks
$355,234 of auraBAL was bought off the market in August, while auraBAL LPs have been earning 35-40% APY in the auraBAL compounded.

Elixir Pool

The deUSD-sdeUSD pool on Aura offers a high APR and 5x Potions. If you’re unfamiliar, @Elixir powers liquidity across some of the largest orderbook exchanges, including Vertex, Hyperliquid and dydx. If you’ve traded perps in DeFi, chances are you’ve indirectly used Elixir’s liquidity at some point.

Built on Balancer
Balancer is emerging as a foundational layer for AMM innovation, highlighted by successes like Gyroscope driving 11% of its volume and CoWSwap’s MEV-protective AMM, which boasts over $12M in TVL.

Stats

Governance

[BIP-693] Aegis Finance - Strategic Partnership Proposal

Aegis Finance has proposed a strategic partnership with Balancer, offering 1% of its SHIELD utility token to Balancer DAO. In return, Balancer will provide public-facing support and leverage its liquidity pool technology to facilitate competitive yields, thereby enhancing Aegis’s visibility and integration within the Frax ecosystem. Aegis, a new CDP platform on Frax Finance’s Fraxtal Layer 2, aims to provide flexible and innovative lending solutions with this collaboration.

[BIP-694] Fund Balancer Maxis for Q4 2024 to Q1 2025

The Balancer Maxis, having transitioned into a professional on-chain DevOps team, are seeking funding for Q4 2024 to Q1 2025 to support the launch and ongoing operations of Balancer v3 among other initiatives. This team plays a critical role in ensuring the smooth operation of Balancer's technology across multiple chains and improving service to ecosystem partners. The funding proposal includes budget allocations for various technical and developmental roles, and it aims to ensure that the Balancer Maxis can continue to manage and optimize Balancer's on-chain operations effectively, including new chain deployments, governance operations, and incentive management.

[BIP-695] Fund OpCo Product team - Oct - Mar

Balancer OpCo, the product development team within the Balancer ecosystem, is requesting funding for the period from October 2024 to March 2025. This proposal seeks $333,325 and 1,875 BAL to continue advancing the Balancer platform, including supporting the upcoming launch of Balancer v3. The team focuses on enhancing user interaction through the UI for liquidity provision, voting, and other protocol features. Past achievements include the successful deployment of the Zen UI and integration of CoW AMM. The upcoming period will emphasize the development of new veBAL features and the deprecation of the v2 UI to consolidate resources and reduce infrastructure costs.

[BIP-696] Transfer GNO to karpatkey’s Treasury Safe & Authorise Staking on Stakewise v3

This proposal, BIP-696, requests the BalancerDAO to claim locked GNO tokens, bridge them to the Gnosis Chain, and assign them to karpatkey’s managed treasury for staking on Stakewise v3. The goal is to leverage idle GNO assets from BalancerDAO's treasury by engaging them in yield-generating activities within Stakewise v3's vaults. These vaults offer APRs ranging from 4% to 10%. The proposal also outlines assigning karpatkey the role of managing these assets, involving specific permissions to deposit, withdraw, mint, and burn GNO as needed to optimize the returns.

[BIP-697] BD Service Provider Proposal for Q4 2024 to Q1 2025

The Balancer Business Development Service Provider (BDSP) proposal for Q4 2024 to Q1 2025 aims to continue driving partnerships, liquidity, and growth within the EVM ecosystem. The BDSP, which has been pivotal in enhancing Balancer's network through effective partner management and strategic initiatives, seeks bi-annual funding to ensure sustained support for the upcoming Balancer v3 launch. The proposal outlines several initiatives, including expanding Balancer v2's liquidity strategy, launching innovative incentive programs, and supporting the v3 rollout. The BDSP plans to manage a budget of $72,000 in USDC and 6,780 BAL over six months, maintaining its role as a key component in Balancer's strategic growth and partner relations.

New Gauges

[BIP-692] Enable sDAI/aUSDC.e E-CLP Gauge [Gnosis]

[BIP-698] Enable Gauge for wrsETH/wstETH [Optimism]

[BIP-699] Enable a wstETH/GYD gauge [Arbitrum]

[BIP-700] Enable a wstETH/GYD gauge [Ethereum]

[BIP-701] Enable a balETH/wstETH gauge [Ethereum]