Our vision for Balanced
Thoughts on ICON’s SODAX announcement, and PARROT9’s plan for Balanced.
Balanced launched 4 years ago, but it’s been our core focus for the past 5 and a half. From the very beginning, we were hooked: you don’t get the opportunity to design a product from scratch very often. The complexity of the problems we had to solve on an ongoing basis — and the pressure to keep up with the contract developers — was an enjoyable challenge that was hard to find elsewhere.
But as the only interface for the Balanced protocol, it meant we had to prioritise what the contracts needed rather than pursue any major initiatives of our own.
So when ICON revealed their plan to merge the Balanced protocol into their new SODAX DeFi platform, we realised this was the opportunity we’d been waiting for:
PARROT9 will assume full control over the Balanced app and brand direction, with an incentive model based on transaction fees to align with our strengths.
As Balanced will be one of many apps to support SODAX, we can choose to add new SODAX features (or not) when they complement our own product strategy.
It’s been incredible to help Balanced transform into a cross-chain DeFi product that’s available on 13 blockchains. Now it’s time to take it to the next level.
Our goal: make Balanced useful AF — the true one-stop shop for cross-chain DeFi.
What the change means for Balanced – and you
Balanced will continue to operate as an interface, but it will no longer be its own protocol.
The SODAX DeFi platform will assume ownership of the core smart contracts, modified to use the Sonic blockchain as its hub. Thanks to Sonic’s sub-second settlement times, transactions will be much faster after the transition.
BALN and Balanced governance will soon cease to exist. The Vote and Stats pages are redundant without them, so we’ll remove both during the transition. @benny_options also laid out proposed steps for BALN and bBALN holders, which will give you an opportunity to unlock BALN early and convert it to the new SODA token.
The bnUSD contract will be upgraded to support Sonic, but it won’t be compatible with the current token. When the time comes, we’ll provide an easy way to convert your bnUSD for the new token 1:1.
Loan and liquidity positions are held on the ICON blockchain, so they’re also incompatible with the new contracts. You’ll need to close your positions and reopen them on Sonic, which will require us to host two versions of the Balanced app. We’ll keep V1 active for at least 12 months to give people time to move their loans and liquidity across, and V2 will include the new design style to make them easier to differentiate. More on this to come soon.
Transactions in V2 will also include a small fee to make our work sustainable over the long-term, but we haven’t settled on the percentage. We want to strike a balance that’s fair for us yet still competitive, so we’re open to input from the community.
Where to from here?
Many details are still in flux, but our path forward has 3 core phases.
1. Complete the transition to Sonic
Currently in progress, expected to take several months.
We’re reviewing and migrating to the new smart contracts, considering interface adjustments, and working on comms and content updates. Thanks to ICON’s modular approach and plentiful SDKs, the app will also receive a major refactor to remove all unnecessary code. The new version will include the improved design style and feel faster in every way.
2. Add money markets and concentrated liquidity
Money markets are a core piece of the new SODAX infrastructure, leveraged by the solver to make larger and more flexible intent-based trades. With benefits for both lenders and borrowers, it will soon become a core feature of the new Balanced app.
This is not the first time we’ve made a money market. We plan to draw from our experience with Omm to design a cross-chain money market that feels right at home on Balanced.
After the money markets, we’ll focus on support for concentrated liquidity to provide more efficient liquidity positions.
3. Widgets
Phase 3 is when we enact our long-term vision for Balanced.
Cross-chain DeFi is filled with pain points. You have to juggle multiple wallets and apps, split your task across too many transactions, pay too much, wait too long, think too hard. The incentives may be attractive, but the apps aren’t nice to use. Balanced reduces or eliminates many of these pains, but there’s a limit to its usefulness while tied to a single protocol.
Once untethered, Balanced will support multiple protocols through widgets.
Widgets give us ultimate flexibility. Anything that makes Balanced more useful for DeFi-related tasks is fair game. Whether you want to stake SUI or SOL, monitor your risk across multiple protocols, or keep an eye on specific price charts, you’ll be able to add and customise widgets to suit your needs.
With tasks and information widgetised for a range of apps across connected chains, Balanced will give you the power to build your DeFi experience around you.
The more useful it is, the more people will use it. And the more likely they are to use SODAX as a byproduct.
We’ll start small with informational widgets to plug the gap left by the Stats page, and get more ambitious with our offering over time.
We plan to make Balanced as useful as possible for our existing audience first, so if there are any apps, actions, or information you’d like us to include to simplify your DeFi experience, we’d love to hear about them.
Our final proposal
There’s a mountain of work required to complete the transition, enact our vision, and make Balanced self-sustainable. We need time for deep focus – without the uncertainty of funding to distract us.
We’d like a fair opportunity to make this work, so we plan to submit one final proposal before Balanced governance disappears.
Our request: the entirety of the Balanced DAO’s holdings.
Most of it is in sICX so its value once converted to SODA is unclear, but it would provide our team with enough resources to support the transition and put our plans into action before we become reliant on transaction fees.
If you like Balanced and want to keep using it, we hope you’ll support our proposal.
