News linked to both this project and an event.
Odaily reports: Crypto researcher Stacy Muur has compiled a list of 82 digital asset projects and protocols said to have shut down in 2026, including Balancer, Radiant Capital, Neon EVM, Step Finance, and others, spanning DeFi, blockchain infrastructure, and Web3 gaming.The shutdowns were driven by declining revenue, exhausted funding, and security incidents. Earlier this year, Bitcoin's price briefly fell below $60,000, retreating from an all-time high of over $126,000 in October 2025, adding financial pressure on projects.When Ethereum Layer 2 network Blast announced its shutdown, it stated that the project had no "credible path to economic viability." Step Finance shut down following a major treasury exploit, while Radiant Capital announced the end of operations after failing to recover from a 2024 exploit.An August study by DeFiLlama showed that 100 crypto projects had announced shutdowns in 2026, 40 of which occurred in the preceding 90 days; the most common reason was product-market mismatch, followed by exhausted funding, insufficient revenue, and pivots to other products. The projects involved raised a combined total of approximately $1 billion and generated $250 million in cumulative fees, with 9 individual projects each raising over $50 million. (Cointelegraph)
Odaily Report: The Balancer community has proposed a "Fork and Reincarnate" proposal, aiming to continue its technology and ecosystem through an official fork in the event that the protocol may be shut down, and to position the new protocol as a tokenized stock trading platform. The proposal suggests that MAXYZ lead the establishment of a new official fork entity, migrating part of the liquidity, team members, partners, users, and intellectual property, while delaying the pause timeline for existing pools and the Vault to Q2 2027.Regarding funding, the proposal plans to use approximately 6 million uncirculated BAL remaining from Balancer as seed funding for the new project, worth about $690,000 at current prices; if the new protocol conducts a token issuance or other liquidity exit event in the future, the Balancer treasury will receive 10% of the new protocol token's fully diluted valuation in advance. The proposal also plans to grant the new fork a perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive license to Balancer-related intellectual property.
Odaily Report: Balancer Labs co-founder Marcus Hardt posted on X that he has proposed a governance proposal to gradually shut down Balancer. Balancer had previously completed a restructuring, including halting token emissions, transferring all protocol fees to the DAO, cutting the operational budget by one-third, and reducing the team from approximately 25 people to 12.5 full-time equivalents.Marcus stated that the restructuring was completed on the cost side as planned, but revenue performance fell short of expectations. Currently, most of Balancer's protocol revenue still comes from v2, and v3 revenue has not grown enough to replace v2. Previous security incidents have also continued to affect partners' willingness to adopt v3. Marcus said he can no longer see a funded path that could change the situation, and continuing to burn through treasury funds is not reasonable. Therefore, he has proposed gradually shutting down Balancer and will not lead efforts to develop a plan for continued operations. The Balancer code will remain open source, and other teams can fork it and continue development. The relevant proposal has been submitted to the governance forum, and the final decision still rests with token holders.