Hey everyone, sharing my two cents as a complete outsider to Balancer.
The Business Case
When I read Marcus’s post, what I see is not a dead business but a lack of optimism.
Balancer is in an extremely healthy state from the runway standpoint.
The idea that somehow the DAO must be cashflow positive less than a year after a hack while sailing through the depths of the DeFi bear market sounds a bit extreme to me.
Even if that were the target, I would argue that Balancer can become cashflow neutral through external factors alone.
I would imagine with crypto getting a bid just the V2 revenue + the treasury yield would already more or less cover the costs, which itself can be cut too.
I also don’t see the security reputation as an unsolvable problem.
There is a way to prove that your contracts are secure: formal verification.
AI tooling is advancing rapidly, and I imagine if you can’t prove that your contracts are safe today, you will be able to do that within a year or two.
That should address what seems to be the main concern.
Another barrier to growth is incentives - and I would argue that this one is as relevant as security posture and the overall market conditions.
BAL is in a great state, however, to reinvent its tokenomics: it’s fully backed - it doesn’t get better than that for a reset.
So yeah, I don’t find a strong reason for Balancer to disappear.
If the old leadership has had enough of the shiteating, that’s fine - find new leadership that hasn’t.
The Winddown Structure
It is on the stewards of the DAO to ensure that governance proposals are fair to all affected parties.
This proposal is not fair to passive BAL holders who do not keep track of the governance - and takes advantage of them.
What makes it worse is that for active holders, voting against this proposal means voting against getting a premium on their shares.
I would imagine if there was a council at Balancer that oversees the governance integrity, it would have a strong case to block this proposal: it exploits the tokenholders who by definition cannot look after their interests.
And doing it this way is absolutely not necessary.
The hard claim is not needed at all to begin with: the same can be achieved by just putting the funds into a concentrated liquidity position.
If existing BAL holders believe they should have a premium on the treasury that comes from dead supply, even that can be achievable through an LP - but with much milder terms for the holders who miss the news.
And this is a guaranteed outcome - there will be people who find out in a year and a half that their BAL bags are worthless and that their share was appropriated based on the liveliness check.
It does not have to happen this way - there are multiple ways to wind down gracefully if that is the choice.
Getting a premium on your share at the expense of rugging your fellow holders is not one of them.