Balancer

Balancer turned the AMM into a general-purpose liquidity construction kit. Where classic DEXs force 50/50 two-token pools, Balancer pools can hold up to eight tokens in arbitrary weights — an 80/20 ETH/DAI pool, for example, acts like an index fund that automatically rebalances as traders arbitrage it. Launched in 2020, it became the infrastructure layer for projects that need custom liquidity logic rather than a plain swap venue.

Balancer v2 introduced a single vault architecture holding all pool assets, cutting gas costs and enabling 'boosted pools' that route idle liquidity into lending markets like Aave to stack extra yield. The protocol became the canonical home of liquid-staking-token liquidity (wstETH/wETH and friends) and the liquidity backbone for protocols like Gyroscope and Radiant. Balancer v3 continues the theme with hooks for custom pool behavior.

veBAL tokenomics follow the Curve model: lock the 80/20 BAL/wETH pool token to direct emissions and earn protocol fees. Balancer is ideal for sophisticated LPs and DAO treasuries — casual swappers are often better served by aggregators that route through Balancer anyway.