Balancer BIP-936: the onchain specs for winding down the protocol

The vote, as read on 28 October 2026

• Abstain00%
• Yes, let's do it6.3m100%
• No, this is not the way<1<0.1%

Voting power, not people: 30 votes cast.

maxyz.xyz posted [BIP-936] Onchain Wind-down of Protocol: Specs to the Balancer forum on 20 October 2026, laying out the multisig calls, pause steps and fee changes that carry out the shutdown of Balancer that BAL holders had already approved a month earlier. Its Snapshot vote closed 27 October 2026 with about 6.3 million BAL of voting power For; the No option drew 0.005 BAL. The wind-down itself was decided separately: BIP-928, Orderly Winddown of Balancer and Distribution of the Treasury, posted by Marcus on 14 September 2026 and approved by Snapshot vote running 25 to 29 September 2026. BIP-936 does not reopen that decision; it specifies how the pauses, fee changes and permission revocations BIP-928 called for are actually executed onchain, which matters because it is the mechanism that moves Balancer from a running protocol to a paused one with no privileged access left.

What it changes

• The specifications cover Ethereum, the only chain where these actions need governance approval; on other chains the core team performs the equivalent steps from its multisig.
• V2: the DAO multisig grants itself permission and disables four official pool factories that support disabling, including the StablePoolFactory and ComposableStablePoolFactory, and grants pause authority to EOA deployer 0x4BC8121278056BFCaC2BD14D455659224d6dDf48.
• On 2026-10-30, the DAO multisig sets v2 protocol swap and yield fee defaults to zero, and anyone can permissionlessly push that update to active pools still reading from the fee provider.
• On 2026-10-30, the EOA deployer pauses every official v2 pool still inside its pausable window.
• V3: the DAO multisig disables the official v3 pool factories the proposal lists; on 2026-10-30, the EOA deployer pauses pools still inside their pausable window and enables recovery mode, except for nine named partners that asked for an extension: Parallel, Treehouse, Royco, Avant, Inverse, Rocket Pool, Blueberry, StakeWise and Neverland.
• On 2026-11-30, the extended partner pools are paused, the DAO multisig pauses the v3 Vault and its buffers, and global v3 protocol swap and yield fees are set to zero.
• The v3 Vault unpauses by itself on 2029-05-12 and most pools follow later that year, except those from the newest factories, which carry a pause window of roughly 75 years.
• From 2026-12-01, the DAO multisig revokes all authorizer permissions except the default admin role; redemption round one starts 2027-05-31; on 2027-06-01 the multisig revokes the admin role itself and DAO governance ends.
• Voted in the same 23 to 27 October Snapshot window, two smaller BIPs carry out the treasury consolidation BIP-928 calls for before round one: BIP-934 burns the DAO's 10,000,000 BEETS on Sonic rather than selling or distributing it, citing BIP-928's instruction to consolidate smaller, less liquid positions; BIP-935 claims about 9.31 AAVE left unclaimed from a former stkAAVE position and sends it to the same managed Treasury Safe that BIP-928 designates for the distribution.

The case for it

BIP-936 itself carries no rationale beyond the steps it lists; the case for the wind-down was made in BIP-928. There, Marcus argued that holding the line further only cost the treasury without changing the outcome: "That treasury belongs to BAL holders. The question is whether what remains reaches holders while it is still substantial, or is spent first on a path that has already been tried." The same post describes the restructuring that preceded this proposal: "With a working product suite, a lean structure and full effort from everyone who stayed, the traction the plan required did not come."

Where it stands

The Snapshot vote on BIP-936 ran 23 to 27 October 2026 and closed with about 6,306,479 BAL of voting power For, 0.005 BAL against and none abstaining, from 30 votes, against a quorum of 5,000,000 BAL. The first dated steps fall on 30 October 2026, which is both the day v2 protocol fees are set to zero under BIP-936 and the withdrawals-only date BIP-928 named. After that comes the 30 November 2026 pause of the v3 Vault and its buffers, followed by the permission revocations and the first treasury redemption round, which BIP-928 opens on 31 May 2027.