DeFi Firms Sign Up to Balancer's Plan for Tackling Lack of Liquidity

Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Balancer has attracted several of its peers to a proposal that aims to increase liquidity and reduce price slippage by replacing the single-asset staking model with a two-token version.

Dubbed the 8020 Initiative, the proposal aims to address the lack of liquidity in DeFi by creating a two-asset pool comprising a governance token and a chain's base token or a liquid stablecoin. According to Balancer, such a structure will allow holders to participate in protocol governance while also providing liquidity on decentralized exchanges.

Arbitrum-based DeFi lender Radiant Capital has joined the 8020 Initiative alongside Alchemix, Paraswap, Y2K Finance and Oath Finance, according to a series of tweets from each of the protocols on Thursday. They join lending protocol Aave, which elected to implement the initiative in 2021.

In a Medium post, Balancer said the current "single asset staking model is outdated," adding that it "incentivizes mercenary capital" and "increases token volatility and slippage." Slippage refers to the difference between a trade’s expected price and the price at which the trade is executed.

In order to participate in protocol governance at the moment, token holders must stake the protocol's native token, which reduces the circulating supply and capital on decentralized exchanges. Under the new model, holders can stake Balancer Pool Tokens (BPTs), allowing them to take part in governance proposals while the underlying protocol's token remains in the pool to provide liquidity to swaps.

This means that as the number of staked tokens grow, so will the available trading liquidity.