Balancer DAO Votes on Proposal to Wind Down Protocol

Balancer's decentralized autonomous organization is voting on a proposal to wind down the decentralized finance protocol and distribute its remaining treasury to holders of its native BAL token. The vote, scheduled from September 25 to 29, follows a failed turnaround attempt after a major security exploit last year. The proposal, authored by former Balancer Labs CEO Marcus Hardt, would cancel a previously approved BAL buyback program and instead allow holders to burn their tokens for a prorata share of the treasury, estimated to be worth at least $9 million. If approved, eligible liquidity pools would transition to a withdrawals-only mode on October 30, 2026, with the first redemption window for BAL holders proposed to open at the end of May 2027. The plan cites a November 2025 exploit that drained roughly $128 million from Balancer v2 pools as a key factor in the decision. The attack led to the closure of Balancer Labs, the protocol's corporate entity, in early 2026. An April restructuring that cut the team and operating budget by about a third failed to restore revenue, with monthly earnings falling from over $200,000 in April to under $60,000 in August.