Executive Summary
2025 was a year defined by hands-on treasury execution and structural improvements for Balancer DAO. By year-end, the kpk-managed treasury stood at $13.7m, while Balancer’s broader balance sheet across Balancer-owned wallets totalled ~$14.3m, including assets held outside the managed treasury scope. Under the stewardship of kpk, the DAO focused on operational resilience, capital efficiency, and deeper ecosystem integration. Disciplined execution and prudent allocation strengthened the treasury’s position while protecting Balancer’s financial runway.
Key highlights of 2025 included:
- Treasury Architecture Update: The DAO executed two major treasury migrations to consolidate assets across multiple chains and bring treasury positions into a clearer, more consistent structure. Anchored by the approval of BIP-850, this work centralised treasury positions and aligned execution with the existing Investment Policy Statement (IPS).
- Execution Infrastructure and Strategic Alignment: Throughout 2025, kpk worked closely with the Balancer team to progressively extend and refine the permissions framework of the existing Zodiac Roles Modifier. These updates expanded the treasury’s execution capabilities while preserving strong controls and clear separation of responsibilities. In parallel, Balancer DAO continued to strengthen strategic alignment with key ecosystem partners. A notable example was the mid-2025 token swap with CoW DAO, in which Balancer exchanged 200,000 BAL for ~631,000 COW under a two-year mutual no-sale commitment. This transaction reinforced long-term incentive alignment and supported deeper collaboration around shared liquidity infrastructure.
- Transparency & Governance: The kpk team maintained monthly financial reporting on the Balancer Forum (per BIP-648) and delivered an internal, near-real-time treasury dashboard based on daily snapshots. The dashboard is currently receiving feedback from a limited group of Balancer contributors and provides granular visibility into balances, yields, and allocations. We plan to share it more broadly as soon as possible. Governance participation remained high throughout the year, with kpk voting on every Snapshot proposal in 2025. The team also engaged closely with the Balancer team, including participation in two major Balancer-hosted onsite events, further strengthening collaboration, trust, and oversight.
Strategic Overview
The core treasury strategy in 2025 centered on preserving capital, securing operational runway, and aligning treasury management with Balancer’s growth objectives. A primary goal was to build a robust stablecoin reserve to fund development and operations through market volatility. By year-end, stablecoin holdings across Balancer-owned wallets had grown to over $6 million, representing roughly two years of gross operating runway for the DAO’s expenses, assuming no protocol revenue. This approach ensured Balancer could weather adverse market conditions while continuing to support its builders and community.
Diversification was a key principle. The treasury balanced low-volatility assets (USD stablecoins, yield-bearing positions) with a measured exposure to blue-chip tokens like ETH, AAVE, and GNO, as well as its native BAL.
Several governance decisions and initiatives shaped the treasury’s course this year:
- Investment Policy Statement (BIP-843): The DAO ratified a formal Investment Policy Statement (IPS) to establish a shared reference point for treasury risk and allocation decisions. The IPS helps frame long-term objectives and provides context for treasury management as the structure and positioning of the treasury continue to evolve.
- Treasury Migration Plan (BIP-850): In mid-2025, Balancer approved a comprehensive multi-chain migration of treasury assets to improve capital efficiency and security. kpk, together with the Balancer team, led a thorough review of all positions and coordinated the cross-chain rebalancing, consolidating approximately $5.6 million of funds from legacy wallets into the kpk-managed Safe.
- CoW Protocol Collaboration (CIP-69): Balancer deepened its strategic partnership with CoW Protocol in 2025. Building on the launch of COWAMM liquidity pools on Balancer, the two DAOs executed a token swap exchanging BAL and COW tokens under mutual lock-up terms. This alliance reinforced Balancer’s role as a key liquidity layer for CoW Swap and aligned both treasuries for joint incentives and future co-liquidity initiatives. The partnership exemplified Balancer’s approach to working with complementary DeFi protocols to drive shared growth.
Risk and Performance Commentary
Risk Management: Throughout 2025, the Balancer treasury was managed with a cautious and proactive risk approach. Deployments followed strict internal due diligence and focused on well-established DeFi protocols and conservative strategy choices, using the Investment Policy Statement as a reference framework.
During the year, kpk further strengthened real-time monitoring of treasury positions by expanding the use of Hypernative alerts to track on-chain events. This setup allows for fast reaction to emerging issues and ensures that positions can be adjusted or exited promptly when risk conditions change.
Performance: Within its risk-conscious mandate, the treasury delivered steady positive performance in 2025, with yield strategies averaging roughly 4–6% annualised APY and generating close to $600k YTD in DeFi results.
Performance was primarily driven by conservative stablecoin deployments, complemented by Gnosis, ETH and AAVE staking exposures. The treasury’s staked AAVE position supported the yield profile by improving the effective stkGHO rate and generating additional AAVE staking rewards. However, this benefit came with token price risk, and changes in AAVE’s market value materially influenced overall treasury value during the year.
Forum Engagement and Community Updates
Transparency and community engagement remained top priorities for Balancer’s treasury operations in 2025. Kpk continued to publish detailed monthly financial reports on the Balancer forum. These reports provided the community with timely updates on treasury balances, asset movements, yield results, and notable events each month. By sharing clear charts and commentary, the updates gave BAL holders an easy way to track the month-to-month evolution of the kpk-managed treasury, alongside protocol activity, and the DAO’s financial runway. In addition to regular forum updates, kpk shared an internal, near-real-time treasury dashboard with the Balancer team toward the end of 2025, providing a consolidated view of the treasury’s evolution, with plans to make it live and accessible to the wider Balancer community in the near future. Together with the monthly forum reports, this tooling improves transparency and will allow contributors and stakeholders to independently monitor treasury activity and execution over time.
The kpk team voted on every Snapshot proposal related to Balancer in 2025, supporting consistent governance participation throughout the year. This 100% voting participation underscores kpk’s commitment to aligning with Balancer DAO’s governance.
Conclusion
2025 was a transformative year for Balancer DAO’s treasury. Despite a challenging environment, including volatile markets and a late-year protocol exploit, the treasury remained secure and achieved steady, risk-adjusted growth. The kpk team stayed focused on Balancer’s core financial objectives: maintaining a sufficient stablecoin reserve, keeping exposure to volatile assets prudent, and generating sustainable yield without compromising safety.
As Balancer heads into 2026, the priority is clear: supporting the protocol’s recovery and rebuilding confidence after the November incident. kpk fully supports this effort and will remain focused on disciplined execution, conservative risk management, and transparent reporting to help the DAO stabilize operations and continue delivering on treasury objectives.
For those interested in reviewing month-by-month performance, detailed records are available on the kpk website under the report section as well as in the monthly reports published on the Balancer Forum, which provide historical treasury performance data.