Balancer V2 Goes Live, Promising Reduced Gas Fees for DeFi Traders

Balancer Labs has released version 2.0 of its automated market maker (AMM).

The upgrade, which has been in development for more than a year, offers a generalized protocol for AMMs operating within the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector. With v2, all pools managed by Balancer will now be administered from a single vault, according to a Tuesday press release.

The move should reduce Ethereum gas fees for end users, Balancer said. The startup had opted to launch v1 with separate pools for security reasons, CEO Fernando Martinelli previously told CoinDesk.

"Our expectation is that v1 will continue to provide the best price until a substantial amount of liquidity migrates to v2," the company wrote. "At which point we expect trades will be routed through v2's Protocol Vault resulting in lower gas costs and better pricing."

Partners for the upgrade have also been announced, including Gnosis, Aave, Gyroscope, Enzym Finance, Ocean Protocol, PowerPool and Techemy Capital. The other DeFi shops will help provide better pricing, higher yields, streamlined liquidity and support for Balancer v2's AMM logic, the firm said.

Additionally, Balancer's v2 introduces asset managers or external smart contracts where the underlying value of a liquidity pool can be put to use elsewhere in the DeFi sector where previously they are often left unused.

Balancer's popularity in DeFi has been climbing, according to data provider DeFi Pulse.

Balancer is now ranked fourth among the top decentralized exchanges in terms of total value locked (TVL). The project also recently conducted a $2 million bug bounty in an attempt to iron out the kinks of Balancer's architecture ahead of the v2 launch.