Major ICON DeFi platform Balanced has released its roadmap update.
Stability Fund
The biggest thing Balanced did over the last month was launch a stability fund, a measure prompted by the UST/LUNA fiasco. What was particularly impressive about this was that it went from idea to implementation to a vote within 48 hours.
To recap, the Stability Fund lets you mint or burn bnUSD one-to-one for approved stablecoins — in this case, IUSDC and USDS — minus a 0.5% fee.
This makes the stablecoin better able to absorb spikes in demand or supply. And the best part about it is that it apparently works. From the report:
“Since launch, bnUSD has barely risen above $1.04 – well below the rebalancing threshold of $1.10 – so rebalancing is now a last resort feature to protect the peg.”
Still, Balanced is taking no chances. Hard caps have been put in place on both IUSDC and USDS — just in case any of them crap the bed like UST.
With ICON Bridge and BTP, the Balanced community will be able to vote to accept stablecoins from other ecosystems, too. Exciting stuff.
For what it’s worth, Balanced also updated its Stablecoin page to “move away from the ‘algorithmic stablecoin’ narrative.” Yeah, probably a wise marketing decision.
Java Migration
Balanced has also nearly completed its migration to Java smart contracts.
In May, it deployed Governance, Dividends, bnUSD, and Staked LP contracts in Java. The last of the core smart contracts — Rewards, Loans, DEX — will be deployed in Java this week.
Continuous rewards will be activated one week after the final contract has been deployed, meaning — among other things — that loan and liquidity rewards will accrue in real time.
Here are some other changes coming with the continuous rewards:
- Loans of every size and risk level will earn BALN
- Liquidity in BALN-incentivised pools will no longer be locked for the first 24 hours
- Liquidity providers will need to stake LP tokens from the liquidity details section to earn BALN from incentivised pools
- BALN in liquidity pools no longer earns network fees, and isn’t factored into voting weight
With the Java migration nearly complete, the Balanced community can focus on developing and implementing new features, including bBALN, multiple collateral types and a custom ICON Bridge UI.
Improved Earnings
Balanced had a good month, earnings-wise. The platform earned a total of $83,534 from May 9 to June 8 — 9,099 bnUSD from loan fees and $74,208 from swap fees.
This was a 130.3% increase from the previous month, when the platform made $36,271.
The DAO Fund increased by $73,873 — a 3.91% gain — to leave a total balance of $1,962,799 based on current market prices.
Balanced has a couple of targets in June, including the completion of the Java migration, the activation of continuous awards and adding ICON Bridge to the Balanced app.
