Balancer is preparing to shut down itself. On September 14, CEO Marcus Hardt published a wind-down proposal on the governance forum, backed by an announcement on X. The proposal ends active development on the project and outlines the final treasury payout for BAL holders. A Snapshot vote is scheduled between September 25 and 29, and until then nothing changes for users.

What the Proposal Explains

For now, this plan keeps things running. Pools and withdrawals work as they do today, and the proposal states this clearly. On October 30, pools that can be paused will be paused. Others will have their fees set to zero, so withdrawals stay open without trading. A small budget of about $400,000 covers the wind-down costs, and the remaining treasury, worth more than $9 million and managed by Karpatkey, goes back to BAL holders.

Users do not need to rush. Funds can still be pulled straight from the pool contracts, and Balancer says withdrawals stay open even after trading stops on October 30. The wind-down changes who runs the protocol, not who owns the money in the pools. Voting happens on Snapshot, and the team has asked holders to enroll ahead of the window.

How Holders Get Paid

At the end of May 2027, funds will opens and will be distributed in phases. Holders burn their BAL and receive a pro-rata share of the treasury in return. A second round follows within two months of the first closing, through an airdrop of anything left over. Any remaining funds will be distributed six months later. The schedule stretches across 2027, giving holders months to act. The codebase will stay open source, so anyone can fork the protocol later.

The Reasons Behind the Shutdown

Balancer launched in 2020, built by Fernando Martinelli and Mike McDonald. It grew into one of the biggest protocols in DeFi, and the money locked in its pools peaked near $2.96 billion in October 2021. Today that figure sits under $30 million. The team pioneered custom weighted pools along the way and added the veBAL governance model in 2022.

On November 3, 2025, the trouble started when an attacker found a rounding flaw in Balancer's V2 stable pools. Then, drained about $128 million in under half an hour, with roughly $100 million coming out of Ethereum alone. The attack also hit pools on Polygon and Base, and white-hat rescuers saved part of the funds. In March 2026, a restructuring shut down Balancer Labs and cut costs, but the money never came back. By August, monthly revenue sat near $30,000, not enough to cover the bills.

Hardt explained the thinking in a post titled How the Bet Went Wrong. He described the restructuring earlier this year as a bet. The protocol stopped paying emissions and cut its costs, hoping the newer V3 design would pull in fresh revenue. V3 worked as perfectly, but users never moved their money over. The old V2 pools kept making most of the fees. The exploit also killed the trust Balancer needed, and that trust never came back.

The Reaction

Aave founder Stani Kulechov wrote, "Sad to see this coming to an end. Balancer has been pioneering DeFi. Huge respect for the team." BAL trades near $0.11. That is down almost 99.8 percent from the all-time high of $74.45, set in May 2021, and the token's market cap now sits near $7.8 million, which is small next to the treasury it will help hand out.

The proposal closes by telling holders nothing changes today. Voting runs between September 25 and 29, and if approved, the phased payout begins. Balancer is not the only platform closing down. The CoinEx exchange also announced this month that it will shut down after nine years.

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