Balancer Labs, the company that built and funded the DeFi protocol Balancer, is shutting down. Co-founder Fernando Martinelli made the announcement Tuesday in a governance forum post, citing the fallout from a November 2025 exploit that drained approximately $110 million — the third known security breach for the project.

"BLabs, as a corporate entity, has become a liability rather than an asset to the protocol's future," Martinelli wrote. The legal exposure from the exploit, combined with no remaining revenue to sustain operations, made the wind-down inevitable.

From $3.5 Billion to $157 Million

Balancer was once a DeFi cornerstone. At its late 2021 peak, the protocol held nearly $3.5 billion in total value locked, alongside Aave, Uniswap, and Curve as foundational trading infrastructure. Today, TVL sits at $157 million — a 95% drop from peak. BAL trades at $0.16 with a market cap of $10 million.

The protocol itself is not shutting down. Martinelli said it still generates around $1 million in annualized fees — enough for a leaner structure. The restructuring plan cuts BAL emissions to zero, winds down the veBAL governance model (captured by bribe markets, he says), and redirects 100% of protocol fees to the DAO treasury instead of the current 17.5%.

What's Left

A BAL buyback is planned to give token holders a fair exit. A smaller team would be absorbed into a new Balancer OpCo pending a governance vote. The roadmap narrows to five areas: reCLAMM pools, liquidity bootstrapping pools, stablecoin and LST pools, weighted pools, and non-EVM expansion.

Martinelli will have no formal role after the wind-down. "If you believe in the restructured Balancer, you stay. If you don't, you get a fair exit," he wrote.