Sablier Labs is done building. The token streaming protocol announced on July 13, 2026, that it is entering maintenance mode, with a full wind-down planned for June 2028. New development stops now. Existing streams keep running.

The decision came from co-founder and CEO Paul Razvan Berg, who cited a sharp drop in usage and revenue during Q1 2026 as the catalyst. Two culprits: delayed token launches that dried up demand, and a wave of AI-assisted competitors who could build similar tools faster and cheaper than ever before.

What maintenance mode actually means

Here is the practical breakdown. Sablier’s smart contracts are non-upgradeable and permissionless, which means no one can turn them off, including Sablier. Anyone with an active stream, vesting plan, or airdrop claim will continue to receive their funds exactly as scheduled.

What does stop: the official interface will no longer accept new vesting streams or airdrops with end dates beyond June 2028. Open-ended payment streams are also blocked. In English: you can collect what you are owed, but you cannot start anything new through Sablier’s front end.

Sablier also accelerated the open-sourcing of its core EVM smart contracts. The original plan had them going GPL-licensed in July 2029. Instead, that happened immediately, clearing the way for community forks before the lights fully go out.

The Solana chapter closed even earlier. Sablier placed its Solana implementation into maintenance mode back in April 2026, and shut down the official Solana UI entirely at the end of June 2026. The Ethereum wind-down is following the same playbook, just on a longer timeline.

A protocol with real numbers behind it

Sablier is not some forgotten ghost chain experiment. Since launching in 2019, the protocol processed over 837,000 transactions across more than 345,000 unique Ethereum addresses. It handled over 547,000 vesting plans, airdrop claims, and payment streams combined. It ran on more than 30 EVM chains plus Solana, and it never suffered a single security incident.

The protocol essentially invented on-chain token streaming as a category. The core idea is simple: instead of dumping a lump sum of tokens into someone’s wallet, you stream them continuously over time, like a salary paid by the second. Teams used it for vesting schedules, DAOs used it for contributor payments, and projects used it for airdrop distributions.

What this signals for DeFi infrastructure builders

Sablier’s exit is a useful case study in what Berg himself called the difficulty of maintaining a venture-scale business in the current crypto market. The protocol worked technically. The market just did not stay large enough, or differentiated enough, to support a full-time team indefinitely.

The immediate open-sourcing of Sablier’s contracts is the most constructive move the team could make on the way out. Community forks built on a battle-tested, exploit-free codebase start with more credibility than something written from scratch.

For anyone currently relying on Sablier for payroll, vesting, or distributions, the operational risk is low in the near term. Smart contracts do not need a company behind them to keep executing. The risk shows up later, if a bug is discovered after the team disbands and there is no one left to coordinate a response. With a clean seven-year security record, that scenario is unlikely but not impossible, and it is worth factoring in for anyone planning streams that extend past the June 2028 wind-down date.