This proposal appears on Balancer’s forum

Introduction

Most here likely recognize BeethovenX as the first approved friendly fork of Balancer which began back in October. Over the last six months they’ve proven themselves to be valuable contributors to the Balancer ecosystem - not only by contributing several pull requests to Balancer’s codebase but by exposing thousands of users to the power of Balancer’s technology. They have created and nurtured a vibrant community while building a world class team of operators behind it, from development to marketing to biz dev.

With the prospect of Optimism launching a token and kicking off what could be an explosive summer of growth the timing is right to establish Balancer as the leading DEX before the gold rush begins. While Balancer Labs could take this on themselves this would mean putting key projects on hold, not to mention that it is far from guaranteed voters would choose to direct BAL emissions to Optimism pools without a financial incentive to do so.

Motivation

I propose that BeethovenX takes charge of an official Balancer deployment to Optimism including contract deployment, front end, infrastructure, and ongoing maintenance as required. This removes any burden on Balancer’s human resources while also creating a strong financial incentive for BeethovenX to attract BAL emissions to Optimism pools. This is accomplished through the 50% protocol fee being split 50/50 between Balancer and BeethovenX. In order to bootstrap adoption and secure Balancer’s position as the leading Optimism DEX, BeethovenX is allocating up to 3M BEETS for bribing veBAL voters in the first six months.

Any farming by either protocol’s treasury on Optimism is acceptable with the condition that earned BAL rewards are either locked in veBAL or held on the balance sheet. No farming and dumping.

This presents a unique opportunity to deepen Balancer’s relationship with BeethovenX, a team which has proven strongly capable of leveraging Balancer technology successfully. As this would be “Balancer on Optimism, by BeethovenX” veBAL would hold governance power because we’re plugging into the gauge system. The governance multisig would have five members, myself plus two Balancer community members and two from BeethovenX. It’s worth pointing out that BeethovenX has no intention of leaving Fantom - this deal is specifically structured to keep all of their usual emissions on Fantom. They do however recognize the opportunity that exists on Optimism and by acting early we can secure a large share, hopefully the majority share, of the DEX market there. This would be a huge win for both protocols and I would point out that while Balancer has a large treasury to throw at opportunities like this you cannot buy the kind of quality team that BeethovenX brings to the table.

Specification

If this vote successfully passes, BeethovenX will begin work on Optimism as soon as possible. They will coordinate with Balancer Labs as required to plug in to the veBAL system. To be clear, this vote passing would enable veBAL voters to direct BAL emissions to Optimism. Individual pools would still need to go through the usual gauge approval process. Transaction specifications will be shared with the DAO Multisig as they become available with confirmation of authenticity from at least two independent sources.