BAL Holders Approved Winding Down Balancer: Payouts to Begin in 2027

Published: September 30, 2026 – 07:34 UTC

Balancer is preparing to shut down.
Balancer’s phased wind-down will begin on October 30, 2026, and the protocol is expected to fully shut down by November 30.
BAL holders could receive around $0.16 per token in May 2027.

BAL token holders approved a plan for an orderly wind-down of the Balancer DeFi protocol. More than 99% of roughly 17.2 million BAL votes backed BIP-928, which предусматриває the protocol’s shutdown, the end of the bug bounty program, and the distribution of the remaining treasury to token holders starting in May 2027.

Balancer Moves to an Orderly Wind-Down

CEO Markus Hardt, former Balancer Labs, who drafted the wind-down plan, said:

“The vote has now closed. […] With that, the orderly winddown described in BIP-928 is approved and we will move into execution.”

Under the approved plan, pausable pools will switch to withdrawal-only mode on October 30, and the bug bounty program will end for all pools.

At the same time, partners can request by October 16 that certain v3 pools remain active until November 30 — after that date, the v3 Vault will be permanently paused.

The decision was driven by insufficient revenue momentum for the protocol. Most of Balancer’s revenue continues to come from v2, while v3 revenue has failed to replace it. According to Hardt, in August the protocol was spending about $150,000 per month on revenue of roughly $30,000.

The plan also notes that the November 2025 exploit, during which more than $128 million was drained from Balancer, complicated the project’s development. At the same time, the proposal’s author stressed that the hack itself is not the main reason for the wind-down.

Treasury to Be Distributed to BAL Holders

The treasury is set to be distributed to BAL holders in proportion to their share in two main stages and a final distribution. The first round will begin in late May 2027: holders will burn BAL and receive a corresponding share of the treasury assets.

According to Hardt’s estimate from September 20, the distributable treasury totaled about $9.96 million, and the amount of BAL eligible for redemption was 63.07 million. That works out to roughly $0.1579 per BAL.

Hardt, for his part, separately noted that this is his own calculation, not an audited figure. The final amount will be determined and verified ahead of payouts opening in May 2027.

After the first round is completed, any unused treasury assets and funds received later will be distributed among the addresses that participated in the first round. The final distribution is scheduled for another six months later.

In parallel, BAL holders rejected BIP-929, which proposed creating an official Balancer fork. About 30% of participants voted in favor, while roughly 70% voted against.

The proposal called for launching a new protocol focused on tokenized equities and other assets, as well as migrating liquidity, the team, and intellectual property. The new project could have received about 6 million non-convertible BAL as seed funding, while the Balancer treasury would have received 10% of the fork’s future token issuance if it launched.

The winddown decision marked another milestone for Balancer following last year’s exploit, the subsequent downsizing of Balancer Labs’ corporate structure in March 2026, and the September proposal to shut down the protocol.

Сообщение BAL Holders Approved Winding Down Balancer: Payouts to Begin in 2027 появились сначала на INCRYPTED.

Source: Incrypted