Redacted

Authors: 0xLamentations (Contributor to Aura DAO)

Summary Last year, Aura launched metagovernance capabilities for the newly-launched veBAL, counting Redacted’s Hidden Hand as a launch partner. Since launch Aura has grown to become the foremost veBAL holder with over 31% of veBAL share, $500m+ TVL, and a few dozen partnered protocols. Aura DAO has since helped teams onboard deeply into the Redacted ecosystem, using Hidden Hand to bolster liquidity. Redacted should seek to further cement the partnership with Aura, and maintain AURA as a tier-one asset.

Background Aura is a meta governance protocol, focusing on optimizing incentives for “ve” tokens, starting with Balancer. Redacted partnered with Aura to launch a Hidden Hand market for vlAURA, allowing DAOs and users that want to direct Aura’s veBAL voting power to incentivize behavior via gauge incentives. Aura DAO has made Redacted a premier partner in its rollout to the veBAL ecosystem. Today, the vlAURA market has over 30 gauges with voting incentives, with ~400-600k in bi-weekly volume. This makes the vlAURA market the biggest Hidden Hand market, and a significant contributor to Redacted Cartel DAO. This is set to continue as Aura goes cross-chain, with contributors working with teams on Arbitrum, Polygon, Optimism, and other chains to route incentives the way of vlAURA via Hidden Hand.

To align the communities, Aura DAO last year proposed Redacted DAO make AURA a tier-one asset, such that Redacted could benefit from gauge incentives, magnified influence over the Balancer ecosystem, and protocol governance fees in the form of auraBAL. The proposal passed, cementing the partnership.

With the forthcoming launch of Dinero and continued growth in Aura’s market share in Balancer and general metagovernance, Redacted can continue to lock AURA it receives as a fee for operating the vlAURA Hidden Hand market to help bootstrap liquidity for DINERO and other Redacted ecosystem assets. Redacted can also leverage Aura’s growing network of utility partners such as Pendle and Notional to bolster Dinero liquidity and utility. Conversely, Aura DAO contributors are committed to continuing to direct protocols, along with their own incentives as per their AIPs, toward using Hidden Hand and Hidden Hand v2 once its live.

Cementing the partnership here by continuing to align financial incentives gives the DAOs certainty to work together into the future as they both scale to new markets.