You make some excellent points.
At the moment we have focused on growing DPI AUV and features at the expense launching new indices. The idea is to become the centre of DeFi mindshare and integrations (Cream, Yearn, Maker, AAVE…) while working on CEX listings etc.
The Devs have been working on meta governance, and we are discussing intrinsic productivity (i.e. farming some of the tokens that we have int he vault).
Liquidity means that AUM is always going to be a fickle beast. But if we get a Maker vault, and people use it then it becomes stickier. We have $30 AUV which is 10x the nearest competitors (PieDAO who are also liquidity mining). If you look at just AUV, which one will Hegic want to integrate first?
I think the main barriers to launching more indices are identifying fantastic market fit, robust constructions (no weakensses), providing / generating liquidity, and the time involved to generate, launch and market them. The coop has delayed launching a second fund to focus on DPI, but we have a strong proposal that we think could be launched with minimal support from the coop (coinshares IIP-07)
Balancer pools can be used as indix funds if that is how you use them (Thats what PieDAO do). The structure has some benefits (captrues trading fees from rebalances), but has some waknesses (what happens if one of the tokens collapses).