Thanks for putting this together and bringing it forward.
Itâs an incredibly bold proposal, in line with the current times and past events. The new system would be much simpler, and thatâs very much needed in this context.
You have my support, and Iâll be voting in favor with whatever power I have.
A builderâs response to the tokenomics revamp
âBalancerâs long term success depends entirely on the success of the protocols and products built on top of it⌠No single product or project can beat a thriving ecosystem of diverse teams focusing on different problems, addressing different markets and creating their own business models.â Fernando Martinelli, 2021
Fernando has announced his support for this proposal, and I understand why. The emissions model is dilutive, the veBAL system has been captured, and the Treasury needs revenue. These are real problems. I agree with the diagnosis.
But the proposal optimises for the current state rather than discovering the next one. The November exploit caused a TVL shock. Recovery requires new reasons to use the protocol. V3 provides those reasons, it´s an architecture that no other AMM can replicate. But V3âs routing potential is unrealised. Realising it requires experimentation by external teams. Experimentation requires a permissionless discovery mechanism. This proposal removes the only one that exists, and in doing so, freezes the routing layer in its current underdeveloped state.
To be transparent upfront: my veBAL is locked and my vlAURA is locked for the cycle. I canât sell either regardless of what happens. This is not about my bag â itâs about what Balancer loses if this passes as written.
TL;DR: This proposal fixes the circular economics but removes V3âs only permissionless, scalable discovery mechanism. Balancer hasnât yet realized the routing advantage V3 enables, and removing the tool that lets builders experiment ensures it never does. Without it, new pools launch at 0% yield with no path to liquidity. Builders go to Curve or Aerodrome, where discovery tools still exist.
The question for voters: are we optimizing for Balancer as it is today, or discovering what V3 makes possible? The circular economics deserve to die. The discovery mechanism does not.
What I built and why it only exists here
I deployed five multi-asset pools on Balancer V3, the Miliarium Aureum, holding the highest-volume tokens in DeFi: cbBTC, AAVE, LINK, XAUt, GHO, and yield-bearing stablecoins. Each is a five-token weighted pool covering ten trading pairs simultaneously, with 52% ERC-4626 composition. V3 does something no other AMM can do with these same tokens: LPs earn native vault yield on the yield-bearing components while sitting in the pool, multi-asset composition dampens impermanent loss, low fees attract aggregator routing, and hooks enable custom pricing logic like StableSurge.
The dual-anchor architecture is impossible on Uniswap, Curve, or any other AMM. It requires multi-asset weighted pools, ERC-4626 rate providers, and the Smart Order Routerâs ability to split trades across parallel paths. Every dollar of TVL in the Miliarium Aureum is permanently Balancerâs.
Emissions bootstrap these pools. They donât sustain them. Once a pool reaches sufficient depth, aggregator solvers index it, and once routing paths are encoded, they tend to persist as long as minimum viable depth is maintained. Volume flows regardless of BAL rewards. The structural advantages such as 52% of LP capital earning native vault yield independent of trading, ten pairs per pool instead of one, lower fees than Uniswap, they will persist.
Emissions compress the time it takes to reach that self-sustaining state. Without them, the pool may never get there.
A critical point on causality: this proposal assumes volume creates routing, and routing creates success. The reality is reversed. Routing depth doesnât create itself. It emerges from seeded liquidity structures. Emissions seed the liquidity. Liquidity enables routing. Routing generates volume. Volume generates fees. Without the first step, the chain never starts.
I committed 20,000 veBAL, have been accumulating vlAURA, and am the first LP in every pool. Funded entirely through a day job with no grants, no VC, no token sales.
I built here because of three things:
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Pool architecture: Balancerâs founding premise is that it allows permissionless iteration and complete reconstruction of pool designs. My pools structurally cannot exist elsewhere. But architecture without bootstrapping tools is a museum: technically impressive, economically empty.
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Permissionless emissions: veBAL and vlAURA allowed me, a solo builder with no BD relationship and no grant application, to bootstrap my own pools. I acquired governance, directed emissions, and created yield on my infrastructure without asking anyoneâs permission.
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The Aura amplifier: vlAURA gave a small builder more governance than raw veBAL. Fernando is right that meta-governance has been used for capture. But Aura was actively supported by Balancer, it was built as an ecosystem partner, not a rogue actor. Now it is not anymore? And the same system that Humpy exploited is also what allowed a solo builder to meaningfully direct emissions without being a whale. The problem is governance capture by bad actors, not the amplifier mechanism itself. Eliminating vlAURAâs economic function concentrates governance in the hands of the largest BAL holders and a 12.5-person core team. That is solving capture by removing participation entirely.
This proposal eliminates two of these three. The architecture survives. The permissionless builder pathway does not. I am not an outlier case, I am exactly the type of builder this system currently enables: capital-constrained, independent, and willing to experiment without permission. The question is whether there will be any reason for the next builder in that category to make the same commitment I did.
The emissions are not the problem, the valuation Is
The proposal states that 3.78M BAL/year creates ~$580K in sell pressure. At $0.154/BAL, thatâs correct. But that number is a symptom of the valuation, not a cause.
| Protocol | MC/TVL |
|---|---|
| Cetus | ~0.5Ă |
| Curve | ~1.0Ă |
| Uniswap | ~2.0Ă |
| Balancer | 0.067Ă |
At Cetus multiples, the same emissions would be worth ~$4.3M/year which would be enough to fund the entire operating budget. The emissions arenât expensive. Theyâre cheap because BAL is mispriced.
What BAL needs is not fewer emissions, itâs a mechanism to discover V3âs routing potential. Volume drives fees. Fees drive revenue. Revenue drives re-rating. But volume doesnât appear spontaneously on new pool architectures, it follows routing depth, and routing depth emerges from seeded liquidity. Re-rating comes from the market seeing real volume-generating infrastructure built on V3. Remove the discovery mechanism and the re-rating never arrives.
The Miliarium Aureum is designed to be that proof of concept. The same tokens that generate billions in daily volume on Uniswap, in pair-based pools, with full IL exposure, no underlying yield, one pair per pool, arranged in a superior architecture that Uniswap cannot replicate. This is what V3 was designed for.
Cutting emissions to save $580K/year while Curve maintains CRV emissions and Aerodrome maintains AERO emissions is unilateral disarmament in a competitive market. Balancer removes its discovery mechanism while every competitor retains theirs. The 5.4% annual dilution is modest by DeFi standards. The opportunity cost of removing V3âs only permissionless, scalable discovery mechanism is not.
Balancer is underutilised relative to what V3 enables. The architecture supports multi-asset routing, yield-bearing compositions, and capital-efficient pool designs that no competitor can replicate. But that routing layer is underdeveloped, not because the technology doesnât work, but because not enough teams have had the tools to build on it. BAL MC / TVL multiple is priced for stagnation. and removing the discovery mechanism ensures it stays there.
The aura unwind: a systemic risk the proposal does NOT model
The proposal eliminates $580K/year in BAL emission sell pressure. But it introduces a new systemic risk that hasnât been priced or modelled.
Aura holds a significant portion of all veBAL as auraBAL. If AURAâs economic function dies, and it WILL under this proposal, auraBAL holders have a rational incentive to exit. They redeem auraBAL for the underlying 80/20 BAL/WETH BPT. They withdraw from the 80/20 pool. They receive BAL and WETH.
They sell the BAL.
This may not happen all at once, but the incentive structure makes it likely, and the proposal doesnât model the scenario. If it does happen, the sell pressure is not a gradual $580K/year drip, it is a compressed unwind of Auraâs veBAL position over weeks, not years.
The proposal offers a BAL buyback at NAV (~$0.16) capped at $3.6M. If a concentrated unwind pushes BAL below $0.16, the buyback becomes the only bid, and itâs capped. Everyone beyond the cap sells into a market with no floor.
And the $3.6M buyback at NAV? The largest holders, including the very governance captors this proposal identifies as the problem, have the strongest incentive to exit first at a premium over market. If Humpyâs position fills the buyback cap, smaller holders get nothing and sell into an open market with no floor.
This is a reflexive risk that the proposal introduces without modelling. If a governance proposal creates a new systemic risk, that risk should be quantified before implementation, not discovered after the vote passes.
No replacement for V3âs discovery mechanism
The proposal frames emissions as circular economics with net-negative ROI. That framing is correct for legacy pools where emissions subsidize stagnant liquidity. I agree.
But the same mechanism is also the only permissionless, scalable way for external teams to discover what V3 can do. The proposal offers no replacement. The companion Operations BIP restructures growth to âfocused strategic engagementâ and âoutreach reserved for large strategic partnerships.â
The missing concept here is time-to-viability. This is not about whether pools eventually attract organic liquidity, itâs about whether they reach viability before builders abandon them. A pool displaying 0% BAL rewards while Curve and Aerodrome show emission-boosted yields next door will not attract LPs, no matter how superior the architecture. The builder waits weeks, then months, then gives up. Emissions donât just add yield, they compress time-to-viability from months to weeks. That is the difference between a builder choosing Balancer and choosing somewhere else.
And the deeper problem is selection pressure. Without a discovery mechanism, only already-liquid or already-connected teams survive on Balancer. That is not discovery, that is selection bias. The pool designs that would have revealed V3âs routing potential never get tested, because their builders never reach viability. The protocol doesnât learn what itâs capable of.
Emissions are not an incentive program. They are V3âs R&D funding layer. Removing them doesnât cut waste. It cuts the protocolâs ability to learn.
This is not a novel problem, it is the same economic structure as every discovery platform. YouTube did not start with ad revenue. It subsidized creators first because without content, there are no viewers, and without viewers, there is no revenue. The platform could not know in advance which creators would succeed. It had to enable creation before it could select outcomes.
Balancer V3 faces the same constraint. Emissions fund pool creation. Liquidity enables routing depth. Routing enables aggregator inclusion. Aggregator inclusion drives volume. Volume generates fees. The full pipeline: emissions â routing â volume â revenue. Every step is observable on-chain. The subsidy is temporary. The routing revenue is permanent.
If emissions are removed, the pipeline breaks at the first step. No creation â no routing â no volume â no fees. The system does not degrade gradually. It fails to start. This proposal removes the input to a system whose output we are trying to increase.
The question is not whether to subsidize, it is what to subsidize.
The previous system subsidized generic liquidity and attracted mercenary capital. That failed. But a constrained system, with emissions directed only to V3-native, yield-bearing, multi-asset pools is not paying for liquidity. It is funding discovery. And without discovery, V3âs routing layer is never realized.
The V3 architecture is the best in DeFi. I believe that that is why I built on it specifically because of its technical superiority. But architecture alone does not attract builders or liquidity.
If thatâs true, and the current TVL and volume metrics suggest it is, then the current state of the protocol is not the baseline to optimize around. Itâs an incomplete system. Current metrics are irrelevant to what V3 can become. Current pools are fragments of an undiscovered routing network. Optimizing the economics of an incomplete system is premature. The priority should be discovering what V3 can actually do, and that means enabling pool designs that donât exist yet, built by teams that havenât started yet, solving problems nobody has identified yet. Without a permissionless mechanism for that experimentation, it never happens.
Iâd put one question to every voter:
if emissions are removed, what mechanism discovers new routing structures on V3?
The proposalâs answer is BD outreach, grants, and organic growth. All three are slower, permissioned, and non-scalable. A 12.5-person team cannot discover what a permissionless ecosystem of builders can. That is the entire lesson of Fernandoâs 2021 statement.
What Iâd propose instead
Iâm not arguing for the status quo. The circular economics on legacy pools are real. The Treasury needs more revenue. These are legitimate problems. But the solution is reformation, not elimination.
The old emissions system directed rewards to generic liquidity: V2 pools, the 80/20 BAL/WETH gauge, stagnant pairs with no structural edge. That attracted mercenary capital that left the moment incentives dropped. The proposal is right to kill that.
But the reformed version looks nothing like the old one:
Preserve the discovery mechanism and redirect it.
Stop emissions to the 80/20 BAL/WETH pool entirely since BAL emissions flowing to BAL holders is the definition of circular economics.
Restrict gauge eligibility to V3 pools with ERC-4626 composition above 50%, ensuring emissions flow exclusively to architecturally sound pools that generate yield fee revenue for the protocol. No legacy V2 pools, no governance staking, no single-pair commodity pools.
Set a minimum TVL threshold low enough to allow discovery ($10K) rather than the $100K Core Pool requirement that excludes new builders by design.
The emission rate stays the same only the destination changes. veBAL holders retain voting power to direct emissions across eligible V3 pools, preserving the governance mechanism while eliminating the circular economics. I hold 20K veBAL and this proposal would eliminate my own staking yield. Iâm making the suggestion anyway because itâs the right design.
Under this model, emissions become what they should have been from the start: R&D funding for V3âs routing layer. Not subsidies for mercenary capital on generic pairs, but investment in the discovery of pool architectures that create structural advantages no competitor can replicate. The circular economics die. The discovery mechanism lives.
Preserve gauge infrastructure with performance criteria. Require pools to demonstrate minimum organic volume or TVL growth to remain gauge-eligible. Unproductive gauges die naturally. Productive ones keep the bootstrapping tool. Sunset over 12-18 months, not a cliff. Give builders time to transition pools to organic fee sustainability. A cliff halt creates maximum disruption with no adjustment period.
Reform Aura compatibility, donât destroy it. The governance capture problem is real but the solution is better rules, not eliminating the amplifier. The proposed emission mechanism restricts vlAURA voting to V3 pools only, as described above, rather than removing the system that makes governance accessible below whale scale.
Route fees to Treasury: I agree with this. veBAL holders receiving of fees while the Treasury runs a $2.6M deficit is not sustainable. Fix the revenue side. But donât destroy the builder incentive layer in the same proposal.
Iâd ask the authors and every voter to sit with one question before this goes to a vote: are we optimising for Balancer as it is today, or discovering what V3 makes possible?
If the answer requires a BD call, a grant application, or a partnership agreement, then this proposal has replaced a flawed but permissionless discovery mechanism with no discovery mechanism at all. The circular economics deserve to die. V3âs routing potential deserves a chance to be discovered. Donât remove the only mechanism that discovers it.
I am not mercenary capital. I am not a farm-and-dump actor. I am not a governance extractor. I am a builder who committed permanent capital, deployed novel infrastructure, and funded everything while having a day job. I am exactly the partner the emissions system was designed to attract. If a fully self-funded, architecturally committed builder cannot reach viability under the new model, the system excludes that class of participant entirely. And if it does, then who exactly is this protocol being built for?
For a detailed look at what V3-native routing infrastructure looks like in practice: The Miliarium Aureum â Dual-Anchor AMMs and the Small-World Routing Problem
https://balancer.fi/pools?textSearch=ixedel+or+svzchf
Sagix â sagix.io Builder on Balancer V3
To illustrate what V3 discovery looks like in practice I have been preparing for some time now:
This is what a builder does with the emissions mechanism: builds routing infrastructure for an underserved currency, connects it to an existing protocolâs economics, creates minting demand that benefits their treasury at zero cost to them.
This is the kind of cross-protocol integration that only external builders produce: an oracle-free savings module from one protocol becoming the yield-bearing anchor of a routing constellation on another.
That kind of innovation doesnât come from a roadmap. It comes from a permissionless ecosystem.

Authors: @danielmk, @0xDanko, @Xeonus, @mendesfabio, @Marcus
PR with Payloads
Summary
This proposal aims to transition Balancer protocol from emission-subsidized growth to revenue-driven sustainability. It is designed to be voted alongside the companion [BIP-XXX] Operational Restructuring for Balancer.
The TL;DR of core changes introduced are:
Motivation & Context
Balancerâs tokenomics was designed for a growth phase, incentivizing liquidity through BAL emissions and distributing fees to veBAL holders and a small portion to the Treasury. That model achieved its original purpose, but has run its course. The economics are now working against the protocol.
(1) Does not take into account BLabs expenses
BAL is trading below its net asset value (NAV), meaning holders are implicitly subsidizing the Treasury. This proposal corrects that by offering exit liquidity at a fair price and building a model where the remaining Treasury sustains the protocol long-term.
Why act now: status quo vs. this proposal
Continuing the current model for another year costs the protocol ~$580K in BAL sell pressure, ~$2.6M in operating deficit, and delivers diminishing returns to veBAL holders. This proposal offers a concrete alternative: route 100% of fees to the Treasury, reduce V3 protocol fees to attract more TVL, and move to an estimated ~$1.22M/year in DAO revenue against a lean operating budget (detailed in the companion Operations BIP, premises and assumptions to different scenarios can be found here: source).
Specification
BAL Emissions and Gauges
BAL token emissions are halted upon vote passage. A phased reduction, gradually winding down, would add complexity without objectively measurable benefits, including prolonging uncertainty. The vote and implementation timeline itself provides the market with advance notice.
The gauge infrastructure for third-party incentive routing (projects directing their own non-BAL rewards through the existing system) is maintained on a best-effort basis. The core team may address the long-term future of gauge infrastructure, including potential migration to MERKL. The intent is to preserve the ability for protocols like Aave, Lido, and RocketPool to incentivize their own liquidity on Balancer.
Protocol Fee Structure
At 50% swap fee, Balancerâs take is among the highest in DeFi. The reduction means LPs keep a larger share of the fees they generate, making Balancer pools more attractive for organic liquidity. The trade-off is lower per-swap revenue, but a more competitive fee structure should attract incremental TVL. Individual pool rates may be adjusted by the core team if the data supports differentiation.
Fee Routing
100% of all protocol fees route to the Treasury. This replaces the current split where revenue was distributed to veBAL holders (fee share), core pool incentives, the Balancer Alliance program, partners and the DAO. Under the new model, all protocol revenue (V2 swap and yield fees, V3 swap fees, V3 yield fees, LBP fees, and any future fees) flows to a single destination. This simplifies accounting, minimizes the need for onchain operations, maximizes capital reserves for runway, and eliminates the circular economics of using protocol revenue to subsidize liquidity incentives.The objective of the protocol going forward is to run as profitably as possible, accumulating a treasury that can be eventually used for more buy backs in the future.
Vote Markets
All voting-incentive-based programs are terminated. The protocol will no longer allocate budget to StakeDAOâs Votemarket, Paladin, or any other vote marketplace to attract liquidity through incentive-driven gauge voting. With no BAL emissions or gauge voting, these programs serve no economic purpose.
veBAL and Governance
Upon passing of the vote, the last bi-weekly fee run will be executed as normal. Thereafter, fee distributions to veBAL holders will cease. They will no longer receive protocol fee share or any direct economic benefit from holding veBAL. With BAL token emissions eliminated and fees routed entirely to the Treasury, there is no economic function for veBAL to serve.
Governance transitions to a dual voting system where both veBAL and unlocked BAL tokens carry voting rights. This means any BAL holder can participate in protocol governance without needing to lock tokens, while existing veBAL holders retain their voting power for the duration of their lock. The specific mechanics of this dual system (vote weighting, quorum thresholds, and implementation details) will be defined in a dedicated governance proposal.
veBAL Economics Cutoff Compensation Campaign
To compensate veBAL holders that have locked positions and will experience an abrupt cutoff on economic incentives, a $500K compensation campaign will be distributed over a 6-month period. Distributions will be proportional to each holderâs veBAL balance, retroactively snapshot to the moment of this proposal, paid in stablecoins from the DAO Treasury.
Balancer Alliance
The Balancer Alliance Program (BIP-812) is discontinued. The program shared protocol fees with partners in exchange for veBAL accumulation and permanent relocking. Adoption fell short (Dune), and the programâs architecture is incompatible with the restructured tokenomics. It was built entirely around the veBAL system that this proposal fundamentally changes.
Going forward, partner alignment is achieved through competitive LP fee economics, with the core team having leeway to negotiate specific fee structures where warranted. Existing Alliance commitments will be honored through the current processing cycle and then terminated.
Partner Fee Split Agreements
Given 100% of protocol fee revenue will be redirected to the DAO Treasury, any partner fee share agreement will be terminated. This includes the fee share with Beets for managing the OP deployment [BIP-800] as well as QuantAMMs Protocol fee framework [BIP-871]. EZKL [BIP-875] is sunsetted. Any future partner fee share agreement needs to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis and decided by the Core team.
BAL Buyback and Burn Offer
The proposal offers to buy back BAL at Treasuryâs net asset value (NAV) excluding BAL, providing voluntary exit liquidity for holders at a price that remains a meaningful option over the current market.
Why NAV?: BALâs market price as of writing (~$0.154) sits below the protocolâs net asset value per token (~$0.16). Buying at NAV means the DAO pays a slight premium over market, but the positive impact is significant: holders who want out get a fair price without slippage or market impact, and every BAL purchased is permanently removed from circulating supply.
Why 35%?: At current Treasury levels ($10.3M), the 35% cap allocates approximately $3.6M for buybacks. Earmarking this amount at Snapshot effectively creates a price-floor for token holders and secures a healthy operational runway in the Treasury.
Scale of impact: At ~$3.6M and a NAV of ~$0.16, the buyback would retire approximately 22.7M BAL if fully exercised. Roughly 35% of circulating supply and 6x the annual emission rate. This substantially addresses the overhang from years of emission-driven dilution in a single program.
Execution: The Treasury Council will earmark and set aside the buyback allocation in stablecoins. After 12 months (once veBAL locks begin expiring), a 12-week claim window opens for holders to burn their BAL against that allocation. The specific claim mechanism (smart contract design, eligibility verification) is TBD and will be implemented by the core team prior to the window opening. If the buyback is not fully exercised, remaining stablecoins reintegrate into the Treasury when the window closes.
At the post-buyback Treasury level (~$6.2M), with estimated DAO revenue of ~$1.22M/year and the $1.9M/year operating budget outlined in the companion Operations BIP, the annual deficit narrows to ~$700K, giving Balancer development ~9 years of runway in the neutral scenario.
Expected Impact
BAL Holders
Liquidity Providers
DAO Treasury
Conclusion
Stopping emissions entirely could trigger meaningful TVL decline as incentive-dependent liquidity exits. The V3 swap fee reduction from 50% to 25% partially compensates LPs, and core pools already generate organic volume regardless of incentives since the protocol was accelerating this transition. Moving forward, BD will focus on key partnerships to retain business.
veBAL holders lose economic rights. They may vote against both BIPs to preserve the status quo. The buyback offer at NAV and the compensation campaign provide a fair exit, more valuable than the diminishing returns of the current model, while maintaining a healthy runway for the Balancer protocol to keep operating with a lean structure that is still able to deliver positive results and innovations.
This vote gives BAL holders a choice: take a fair exit or stay for a leaner, more sustainable protocol.