Balancer has put forward a recommendation to shut down the decentralized finance protocol and allocate its treasury assets among owners of its native token, BAL.
Marcus Hardt, who serves as a treasury council member and previously held the position of Balancer Labs CEO, shared a governance recommendation on Monday advocating for a structured dissolution. Under this plan, all new business expansion efforts would cease, the protocol would undergo a staged decommissioning, and the DAO would be wound down legally and operationally.
Should this measure pass, it would revoke a prior endorsement for a BAL buyback initiative, replacing it with a proportional, in-kind distribution of the remaining treasury holdings to participants who choose to burn their tokens. According to the document, the treasury currently maintains a token value of no less than $9 million.
Additional DAO-controlled wallets and holdings would initially be consolidated into inventory before being rolled into the initial redemption phase. Tokens belonging to BAL that reside inside the treasury itself would not qualify, with a specific, narrow allowance made for holders of the tetuBAL liquid staking wrapper asset.
“Balancer tried,” Hardt noted. “In April, token holders approved a plan to take the protocol to profitability on a restructured base: costs cut, emissions ended, the token model simplified, protocol revenue routed to the DAO, growth expected from v3.”
Hardt explained that although select fresh ventures gained momentum, none of them managed to translate into lasting revenue expansion.
Round I & II
In the event that the discontinuation plan secures approval, notification periods for contributors will extend until October 31, and liquidity pools will switch exclusively to withdrawal modes on October 30. The inaugural redemption period is scheduled to commence at the conclusion of May 2027, lasting for half a year, during which participants can destroy BAL tokens to claim their portion of the treasury.
A subsequent distribution round will target those exact same wallet addresses within a two-month timeframe following completion, accounting for unused shutdown resources, subsequent funds received, and unclaimed portions. A final collection sweep half a year later will allocate any remaining incoming assets.
Balancer mentioned in an update published on X that conversation is ongoing, with the snapshot ballot for the measure anticipated to occur between September 25 and September 29. The platform also emphasized that no operational adjustments will occur within the protocol until the balloting concludes.
This development arrives half a year after Balancer Labs, which operated as the commercial arm of the protocol, ceased operations following a November 3, 2025 security breach that extracted roughly $128 million across multiple chain deployments of Balancer v2 pools.
Originally published at https://www.theblock.co/news/defi/2026-09-15-balancer-proposes-winding-down-414782.
