Decentralized exchange Bunni has announced it is shutting down following an $8.4 million exploit in September, becoming the second crypto project to close operations this week. In a statement on Thursday, the team explained that due to the exploit, Bunni’s growth has come to a halt. To relaunch securely, they would need to cover audit and monitoring costs estimated in the six to seven-figure range—funds the project does not possess.
The exploit on September 2 affected both Ethereum and the layer-2 network Unichain, forcing the platform to halt operations. Bunni’s innovative liquidity optimization, built on Uniswap v4 with its proprietary Liquidity Distribution Function, had seen rapid growth prior to the incident, with total value locked surging from $2.23 million in June to nearly $80 million in mid-August.
Despite ceasing operations, Bunni has open-sourced its v2 smart contracts by re-licensing them from the Business Source License to the MIT license. This move has been praised by the community as it allows developers to utilize Bunni’s unique features, including liquidity distribution functions, surge fees, and autonomous rebalancing. Users can still withdraw their assets through the platform until further notice.
Remaining treasury assets will be distributed to BUNNI, LIT, and veBUNNI token holders after obtaining legal approvals, with team members foregoing any share. Furthermore, the Bunni team is cooperating with law enforcement to recover the stolen $8.4 million.
This news follows shortly after the founding team behind layer-1 blockchain Kadena announced their exit, citing tough market conditions. While the Kadena network remains community-driven, its native token KDA has plummeted 70%, trading at just $0.06.
For further details, visit: https://cointelegraph.com/news/bunni-dex-becomes-second-crypto-project-shutter-this-week