According to Foresight News , Balancer Labs co-founder Fernando Martinelli announced in a community post that Balancer Labs will be gradually shut down. As the original incubator of the protocol, the company has become a burden on its development due to ongoing legal risks stemming from the v2 vulnerability in November 2025 and a lack of revenue. The core Balancer Labs team will be merged into Balancer OpCo (subject to governance approval), and related operational proposals (BIPs) will be submitted by Marcus and Danko.
Fernando Martinelli also stated that the protocol's annualized total fee revenue over the past three months exceeded $1 million, indicating it still possesses practical functionality. The main issues lie in its tokenomics model and excessively high cost structure. He supports the following measures: reducing BAL emissions to zero; terminating the veBAL model; routing 100% of protocol fees to the DAO treasury and reducing the V3 protocol's share to 25% to attract organic liquidity; providing a buyback mechanism for BAL holders to fairly exit liquidity; and focusing on core products such as reCLAMM, LBP, stablecoin/LST pools, weighted pools, and a few EVM chains. After the shutdown, he will no longer have a formal relationship with the protocol but is willing to provide support as an advisor.
