Another platform is closing in the cryptocurrency market. The latest news comes from the DeFi space.
The company that founded decentralized finance giant Balancer (DeFi) has announced its closure. Balancer co-founder Fernando Martinelli stated that Balancer Labs, the institutional organization that developed and funded the DeFi protocol, will close.
This decision comes approximately five months after a v2 vulnerability in November 2025 resulted in the theft of approximately $110 million worth of cryptocurrency (including osETH, WETH, and wstETH).
Martinelli stated: “The November 3, 2025 V2 attack created real and ongoing legal risks.” The co-founder emphasized that the v2 vulnerability attack created ongoing legal risks and damaged the future development of the protocol, as maintaining a corporate structure responsible for previous security incidents became untenable without a revenue stream.
Martinelli stated: “BLabs as a corporate entity has become more of a liability than an asset to the future of the protocol, and without any revenue stream it is not sustainable in its current form.”
However, Martinelli said the protocol would continue to function even after it was restructured with a leaner economic model.
At this point, Martinelli added that he supports the ongoing symbolic economic restructuring proposal, which includes reducing BAL emissions to zero, shutting down the BAL system, redirecting 100% of protocol fees to the DAO treasury, reducing the V3 protocol fee share to 25% to attract liquidity, and providing exit liquidity to holders via BAL buybacks.
*This is not investment advice.