- Balancer Labs, the company behind the DeFi protocol, is shutting down due to financial pressure and fallout from a $116 million hack in November.
- Executives propose a leaner, community-led future for the protocol under the Balancer Foundation and its DAO, with zero BAL token emissions and lower costs.
- The protocol’s Total Value Locked (TVL) has plummeted from a peak of $3.3 billion in 2021 to $158 million, illustrating the severe impact of the security breach.
- Despite the crisis, the protocol generated over $1 million in revenue in the last three months, which founders call a foundation for a sustainable rebuild.
In a major shakeup for decentralized finance, Balancer Labs announced on Monday it is winding down operations, a decision driven by unsustainable financial strain and legal exposure from a devastating $116 million hack last November. Founder Fernando Martinelli stated the corporate entity had become a liability, operating without revenue while shouldering the burden of past security incidents.
CEO Marcus Hardt added that the company’s strategy of spending heavily to attract liquidity was diluting BAL token holders without sufficient protocol revenue. Consequently, the once-prominent protocol, which reached a $3.3 billion TVL peak in 2021, saw its locked value collapse.
TVL fell to $800 million by October 2025 before the hack triggered another $500 million drop within two weeks. It now stands at just $158 million, demonstrating how challenging it is for DeFi protocols to recover from large-scale hacks.
Moving forward, executives are advocating for a community-led transition. Martinelli and Hardt propose that the Balancer Foundation and the protocol’s DAO manage a leaner future, cutting BAL emissions to zero and restructuring fees.
This plan aims to enable the DAO to capture more revenue while drastically reducing operating costs. “Balancer still has real value to build from here,” Hardt said, arguing a successful transition could create a stronger protocol.
DAO members are now asked to vote on two critical restructuring and tokenomics proposals. Meanwhile, Martinelli highlighted that the underlying protocol remains functional, generating over $1 million in the past three months.
“That’s not nothing — that’s a functioning protocol buried under a broken tokenomics model and an overweight cost structure,” he said. He concluded, “The problem isn’t that Balancer doesn’t work. The problem is that the economics around Balancer aren’t working. Those are fixable.”
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