Balanced: 2025 in review

During 2025, Balanced expanded cross-chain functionality to the Savings Rate, liquidity pools, and rewards; connected to Polygon, Sonic, and Hyperliquid; upgraded the exchange; and began to wind down the Balanced protocol in favour of a new direction.

Here’s a brief look at everything that happened in 2025, and what you can expect in 2026.

Cross-chain Savings Rate, liquidity pools, and rewards

In March, Balanced extended the Savings Rate, liquidity pools, and rewards to 10 blockchains.

Months in the making, this release was a big deal because it meant Balanced was no longer limited to an audience on the ICON blockchain. Except for governance, you could finally use Balanced to its fullest extent on every connected chain.

Polygon, Sonic, and Hyperliquid

A few days after the cross-chain upgrade, Balanced added support for Polygon. The first blockchain connection to ship without any liquidity for its core token (POL), it instead relied entirely on intent-based trades.

The Sonic connection shipped in September alongside an upgrade to SODAX’s new tech stack for intent-based trades. Sonic is the new hub chain for SODAX (formerly ICON), so trades through it are blazing fast.

And in November, we added Hyperliquid to make it easier to trade HYPE across chains.

While you can only trade a few core assets on these blockchains, many more will come in 2026.

A protocol no more

In May, the ICON blockchain (Balanced’s primary contributor) announced their plan to absorb the Balanced protocol and become SODAX, a chain-agnostic DeFi protocol on Sonic.

No longer a community-owned protocol, we shared our vision to make the Balanced interface a one-stop shop for cross-chain DeFi.

But first, we had to move Balanced to the new SODAX tech stack. We upgraded the exchange (which unlocked intent-based trades on every connected chain), retired governance, and added the option to migrate BALN and ICX to SODA, the SODAX governance token.

The new tech stack introduced several wrinkles, like the need for a legacy exchange and two versions of bnUSD. But it was the shift from single-collateral stablecoin loan to multi-asset money market which compelled us to revisit the entire Balanced app from scratch.

We spent most of 2025 creating an interactive demo for Balanced v2, and development is well under way.

Launching in 2026: Balanced v2

Balanced v2 is designed to be the most flexible app for cross-chain DeFi.

It launches early 2026 with a money market and exchange — both powered by SODAX.

Our internal money market build now supports the full supply–borrow–repay–withdraw loop, but it still needs several months of polish and testing.

The new exchange will be rebuilt from scratch and ship at the same time or soon after.

Then Balanced has one focus: widgets.

Widgets will make it easy to assess market sentiment, find opportunities, and interact with numerous DeFi protocols across multiple blockchains — all from a single app. Once Balanced offers an extensive catalogue of useful widgets, you won’t want or need to go anywhere else.

The best is yet to come

In 2026, Balanced becomes a cross-chain DeFi aggregator.

Keep track of everything that’s shipped and what’s coming next from the new Timeline page.

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