Balancer Labs co-founder Fernando Martinelli said the company will be wound down after legal exposure linked to the Nov. 3, 2025 exploit. The statement was posted on the governance forum, while Balancer’s official X account directed users to two new governance proposals. His core argument was direct: the protocol no longer needs a traditional company sitting above it, and future operations should run through the DAO, the Foundation, and approved service providers.
Exploit fallout turned the company into a legal risk
Martinelli wrote that Balancer Labs had become a liability instead of a useful operating layer after the incident. Security researchers and industry reports have described the attack as a roughly $128 million exploit tied to rounding-error issues in V2 pool logic. That leaves the current debate centered less on whether the brand survives and more on whether the protocol can continue without a conventional corporate wrapper.
Governance proposals focus on fees, emissions, and leaner operations
The two live proposals outline the restructuring plan. One proposal would stop BAL emissions, wind down veBAL, and route 100% of protocol fees to the DAO treasury. It would also reduce the protocol’s share of V3 swap fees from 50% to 25%, allowing liquidity providers to keep a larger portion.
The second proposal would move operations to OpCo Limited, cut the team to 12.5 full-time roles, and lower the annual operating budget from about $2.87 million to $1.9 million. Based on the figures in the proposal, the goal is to reduce the annual deficit to around $700,000 and extend runway to roughly nine years under a neutral case.
BAL rises on the news, but voting still matters most
Market reaction was not negative. BAL briefly moved from $0.14 to $0.1588, and was later trading near $0.1541, up more than 2% on the day. That suggests part of the market sees the restructuring as a cleaner and more transparent operating model rather than a simple shutdown headline.
In the short term, $0.15 is the level being watched. Holding above it could open a move toward $0.16 to $0.17, with a possible extension to $0.18. A break below that area could send the token back toward $0.145 to $0.13. The next phase will depend on whether token holders approve the proposals, whether protocol fee generation improves, and whether confidence returns after the exploit.