Greetings everyone, this post is an update to the Balancer & Beethoven X Phase 1 grant.
Original grant application
Grant update January 2023
Grant update July 2023
Grant update February 2024
The Phase 1 grant awarded Balancer & Beethoven X with 500,000 $OP tokens. The grant was set up with a long-term strategy with the focus on longevity and sustainability. The grant set that every $OP token used from the grant would be matched 1:1 in value from protocol fees. Due to this no specific timeframe could be set for the grant distribution, which was also stated in the initial application.
To further solidify a symbiotic relationship with the Optimism ecosystem, it was decided the protocol fees would be first used to buy $OP tokens from the open market and then paired with the grant $OP tokens 1:1 on an $OP token level. To our knowledge, this is the only grant where an equal share of $OP tokens have been bought from the open market.
The awarded OP tokens have been used as voting incentives on the Hidden Hand vlAURA market. As of today, a total of ~259,450 $OP tokens have been used with 240,550 $OP tokens left. A total of ~268,500 $OP tokens have been bought from the open market that have been paired with the $OP tokens from the grant.
Below are the detailed monthly breakdown of $OP activities on the Beethoven X treasury on Optimism. At this moment, all of the $OP tokens in the treasury are the remaining Phase I grant rewards. These number can be verified on the Beethoven X Optimism Treasury multisig.
Since the Phase 1 grant $OP funds can only be matched with protocol fees and the protocol fees are recycled back into pools that are eligible for the Balancer’s Core Pool system, then the Phase 1 grant $OP has also been used to further incentivize such pools. This means that the Phase 1 grant funds have been used to deepen the liquidity of various yield-bearing assets on the chain, such as wstETH, wrsETH, rETH, sfrxETH, weETH, ankrETH, sFRAX and assets paired with these in various pool setups.
It has been brought to our attention that the OP Council would like to see faster distribution and conclusion for the Phase 1 grant. We are now in contact with the OP Council and are looking into suitable options for repurposing that would give high efficiency for the remaining tokens while also providing a clear timeline for the distribution.