Balancer is a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange platform (DEX) that was founded in 2019. It is one of the leading automated market makers (AMM) in the crypto industry. The Balancer crypto exchange serves as an automated portfolio manager, crypto price sensor, and liquidity provider. Instead of paying fees directly to portfolio managers to rebalance their portfolios, users collect fees from traders with arbitrage opportunities. Balancer enables users to trade ERC-20 assets without permission. Besides, Balancer users can utilize the open-source code from GitHub or the Balancer V2 API to create their own decentralized application for the cryptocurrency platform.
There are two versions of the platform – Balancer V1 (the one described here) and Balancer V2. Balancer Labs have made some significant improvements to the protocol in the V2 phase. The biggest change between V1 and V2 is the transition to a single vault that manages all assets held by all Balancer pools. V2 also ensures gas efficiency by only allowing the final net token amounts to be transferred to and from the vaults. Also, Balancer V2 enables users to hold internal token balances, which is extremely useful for high-frequency traders. Additionally, it introduces users to Asset Managers who can lend tokens to a protocol to improve its yield.
The Balancer cryptocurrency exchange does not require you to go through the KYC procedure as it is a completely trustless and permissionless crypto exchange platform. Balancer accepts traders from Australia, Thailand, Canada, United States, United Kingdom, South Africa, Singapore, Hong Kong, India, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Italy, Denmark, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Luxembourg, Qatar, and most other countries.
Balancer does not have a mobile application and is, therefore, not compatible with mobile devices.
Markets
There is the availability of Balancer spot, perpetual, and futures markets. Overall, the exchange has 112 markets with over 60 Balancer trading pairs. AAVE/WETH, WETH/AAVE, and MPL/USDC are the trading pairs that have the highest Balancer trade volume.
BAL is the native currency of the Balancer cryptocurrency exchange. It is a governance token that gives you the ability to participate in the governance of the Balancer protocol. Balancer governors have the ability to vote on decisions regarding the protocol. Holders of the BAL token can also earn more BAL by staking them as liquidity providers. Check out the Balancer crypto price here.
The Balancer crypto fees depend on several factors, including the chosen crypto network, the parameters of the pool, trading pairs, and the trading volume in the market. Swap fees vary between 0.0001% and 10% on the Balancer crypto exchange. In V2 Balancer, you will also be charged a small protocol fee. You are only charged a withdrawal fee if you entirely remove tokens from the protocol. You are also charged a fee for flash loans that are repaid within the same transaction. Besides, users are paid back 90% of the gas fees charged on the Balancer platform.
Other Services
The Balancer cryptocurrency exchange aims to be the primary liquidity provider in the DeFi world. Balancer consists of Liquidity Bootstrapping Pools (LBPs). These are smart pools that allow for fair price discovery and prevent bots from profiting off of retail traders.
Overall, Balancer is revolutionizing the decentralized exchange industry by providing users with they key services to make the most of their trading experience. Liquidity mining leverages Balancer’s 98% DAI and 2% YFI pools to enable liquidity providers to add liquidity and earn YFI in return.
Talking about additional features offered by Balancer, the Surge Pricing feature allows for an adjustment in the Balancer exchange fees based on market volatility. Rebasing ensures arbitrageurs can’t drain value from pools and cause its price to face volatility.
Furthermore, the Smart Order Router (SOR) allows users to discover the best pricing by identifying the best trades for a given set of tokens.
Also, the Merkle Orchard contract allows liquidity providers to claim tokens from the contract. It is currently being used to distribute BAL and other tokens to promote liquidity on the protocol.
Lastly, the Balancer Gnosis Partnership (BGP) is the default trading interface that allows Gnosis Solvers and Balancer Vault to perform trades in batches by simply signing a message to initiate gasless transactions.
About the Company
Balancer was founded in 2019 and it aims to revolutionize the FinTech industry by becoming one of the top decentralized exchanges in the world. It offers users the ability to access a self-balancing weighted portfolio manager, a price sensor that enables the decentralized exchange of tokens, and the automated portfolio management of tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. You can access all this in exchange for affordable exchange fees on the platform.
Balancer was the victim of a pool hack where an attacker was allowed to steal cash from two pools containing tokens with transfer fees. The platform had previously warned users about the consequences of having ERC-20 tokens with transfer crypto fees. Since this is a permissionless system, such occurrences were bound to take place.
In response, Balancer added transfer fee tokens to the blacklist. They also added more warnings of such occurrences in their documentation. Balancer also reveals that they will continue to audit protocols regularly to prevent such instances from happening again. Besides, liquidity providers were reimbursed for their losses.
Balancer Labs was founded by Fernando Martinelli, who is also the CEO of the company. Engineering, robotics and image processing, as well as international management, are all areas in which Fernando Martinelli studied. He has previously held positions with organizations including WEG, Airbus, NEO Entrepreneurial, Areva, and others. In addition, he co-founded Brasil Mate, PrepLounge, and Cybercafe game.
The company also had a co-founder and blockchain developer named Nikolai Mushegian. However, he, unfortunately, drowned on a beach in Puerto Rico in late 2022.
