Balancer would stop operating and hand its treasury back to token holders under a proposal posted to the protocol’s governance forum on Monday. The post cancels the buyback token holders approved in April and replaces it with a redemption that burns BAL for treasury assets.

The treasury is worth more than the token. Balancer’s managed treasury is at least $9 million at current prices, the proposal says, citing the figure reported by treasury manager kpk. BAL’s market capitalization is $7.71 million, according to CoinGecko. The proposal excludes BAL itself from the distribution, so redeemers would receive the other assets the DAO holds, in kind and pro rata.

The author is Marcus Hardt, who was added to Balancer’s Treasury Council and to the Foundation and OpCo director multisigs under BIP-918, the April restructuring. A Snapshot vote is scheduled for Sept. 25 to 29, with a quorum of 5 million BAL. The proposal asks for a winddown budget of $150,000 from Nov. 1 to May 2027, $30,000 from then to a final sweep, and a $220,000 reserve drawn only if needed — $400,000 in total.

Burn BAL, Take Treasury

Redemption runs in two rounds and a sweep. Round one opens at the end of May 2027 at an announced and audited snapshot block, and stays open six months, to the end of November 2027. Holders burn BAL and receive their share of the treasury in the tokens the DAO holds. The claim contract records each address and the amount it redeemed.

Round two lands within two months of that close, at the end of January 2028, as an airdrop to the addresses that redeemed in round one. It carries the unspent winddown budget, funds that arrived after round one, and the share nobody claimed. Addresses that skipped round one get nothing. A final sweep six months later, at the end of July 2028, distributes whatever has arrived by then.

Shares are calculated over circulating supply as BIP-919 defined it: total supply minus treasury BAL and minus the BLabs vesting and fundraise safes. veBAL locks unlock into 80/20 BAL/WETH pool tokens, which holders exit to BAL. Positions held through auraBAL and sdBAL must unwind before round one closes or forfeit. tetuBAL, an immutable permalock that never converts, is the single exception where treasury BAL is distributed: holders of record at the block of Monday’s post receive BAL equal to half the measured amount.

The mechanism itself is not on the ballot. An implementation specification for the claim contract is due on the forum by the end of February 2027 for comment, and the contract is to be audited before round one.

The Oct. 30 Cutoff

Pools that can be paused are paused on Oct. 30 and move to withdrawals only, with recovery mode enabled where the contracts require it to keep exits open. Pools that cannot be paused keep running with the protocol fee set to zero where the contracts allow. The frontend, routing and communications treat everything as discontinued from that date, and bug bounty coverage ends the same day.

Contributors were given two months of notice on Aug. 27, running to Oct. 31. From Nov. 1, infrastructure steps down to a withdrawal interface, subgraph coverage and documentation, kept available through the veBAL unlock path and both distribution rounds. Admin permissions, multisig roles and the Emergency subDAO are inventoried and then revoked or transferred, with treasury and distribution control retired last.

“The end state is a protocol that needs no one from Balancer: the DAO gives up its own privileged roles,” the proposal says.

Revenue That Never Replaced v2

BIP-918 cut Balancer’s operating budget 34% to $1.9 million, took staff from about 25 full-time equivalents to 12.5, ended BAL emissions and routed all protocol fees to the DAO, as The Defiant reported in March. It also set a review if DAO revenue fell below $60,000 a month for three consecutive months. The proposal says it is that review, brought early.

Monthly burn is about $150,000, against protocol revenue of about $30,000 in August, down from $97,000 in June, according to the proposal, which says most of it still comes from v2. DefiLlama puts Balancer’s total value locked at $58.9 million across all versions, split roughly evenly between v2 and v3, and records $61,230 in protocol revenue over the past 30 days. The treasury earns about $25,000 a month under kpk’s management.

The proposal points to the November 2025 exploit that drained more than $128 million from legacy v2 pools as part of why traction was harder to build, while saying the case for winding down does not rest on it. “Continuing on the current path spends the treasury to arrive at the same place later,” the post says.

Funds recovered from the attacks stay outside the distribution and remain allocated to affected liquidity providers. Recovery work with private investigators and law enforcement continues under the Balancer Foundation until the entities close, with a separate vote deciding who carries it after that.

The Buyback It Replaces

BIP-919 committed the DAO to buying BAL back at net asset value — treasury value excluding BAL, divided by circulating supply — capped at 35% of the treasury measured at that Snapshot, with the window opening twelve months later. That priced the buyback at roughly $0.16 per BAL against a treasury then valued near $10.3 million. BAL trades at $0.1105, down 99.9% from its May 2021 high of $74.45 and 28.3% above the all-time low of $0.0857 set on June 26.

The proposal also supersedes BIP-687, which ring-fenced $1 million in USDC for the bug bounty program. That earmark is released once coverage ends and open reports are resolved.

Contributors Plan A Fork

A “no” vote leaves BIP-918’s mandate and budget, the BIP-919 buyback and the bug bounty in place, and contributors who want to continue under the existing mandate can, the proposal says.

Contributors are working on a separate proposal to keep the infrastructure running under a new name. “That work is theirs, and I told them it has my support as a fork,” the post says. “I will not front a continuation plan, and nothing here funds one.” Neither that proposal nor the parallel bug bounty proposal adjusting the critical-severity cap had been posted to the forum as of Monday.

The author disclosed that he told the Treasury Council and the largest BAL holders what he intended to propose before publishing, and asked them not to trade on it. He said he is not claiming a place on the transition team or in the post-closure recovery work, and redeems on the same terms as any other holder.