Balancer Labs

Balancer Labs offers an automated and non-custodial portfolio manager as well as a trading platform that acts as a liquidity provider and price sensor. The company targets three types of end-users—investors, traders, and developers. 

The protocol provides investors with access to portfolios that automatically generate yield (primarily in the form of the protocol’s native BAL token) and rebalance without needing to pay any fees. Traders can use the platform to access decentralized trades at optimal prices by pooling crowdsourced liquidity of over USD 3.4 billion from over 17,500 liquidity providers (as of December 2021) and using a “Smart Order Router” to find the best available price. Lastly, developers are able to use Balancer for programmable liquidity and to build custom token weights and swap fees as well as liquidity pools that can operate on any price curve. Additionally, Balancer also planned to launch a feature that will enable asset managers to re-utilize dormant liquidity in the near future. 

In May 2021, Balancer raised USD 24.3 million through an initial coin offering (ICO) of BAL. The round was led by Blockchain Capital, Fintech Collective, LongHash Ventures, Fenbushi Capital, Continue Capital, and Kain Warwick. The funds were to be used to strengthen market presence as a core infrastructure provider.

In July 2021, Balancer earmarked USD 10 million for the launch of support on the Layer-2 solution Polygon (formerly known as MATIC). This partnership will enable Balancer to further reduce Ethereum gas costs and enables its users to experiment with pools without risking higher trade fees.