DeFi Protocol Balancer Cuts Budget, Slashes Headcount Ahead of Strategy Pivot

Decentralized finance (DeFi) liquidity protocol Balancer’s service providers revealed they are slashing their operating budgets and laying off staff in a move to overhaul Balancer’s brand strategy during a Thursday community call.

Balancer’s OpCo, which manages the protocol’s front end, has laid off two engineers and reduced its operating budget, the providers’ team revealed during the Discord call attended by more than 20 people. The headcount reduction comes as the protocol turns its focus toward improving its user interface and marketing. To that end, the platform’s service provider, Orb Collective, which directs the protocol’s design, marketing and regulatory strategies, will build out a specialized marketing team that can discuss the mechanics of how Balancer works with the platform’s users. The new outreach strategy will also feature a “crypto Twitter-native voice.”

“We developed a new vision for the Balancer brand that we're very excited about, said Jeremy Musighi, CEO of Orb Collective. “Along with that, we have been making some changes to the marketing team personnel to make sure that we have the right people in place to execute this new vision.”

The news comes as the protocol also faces broader market pressure.

Last month, Balancer’s team revealed the protocol had exposure to the Euler Finance exploit, losing $11.9 million worth of tokens from its liquidity pools during the hack. Months earlier, the protocol also experienced a read-only reentrancy bug disclosure, which deactivated protocol fees for a significant number of the protocol’s pools, causing the platform to miss out on revenue opportunities when cryptocurrency markets were heating up in January.