Decentralized exchange Bunni has announced it is shutting down following an $8.4 million exploit in September, becoming the second crypto project to cease operations this week. In a Thursday post on X, the team cited a severe lack of funds as the reason for winding down. “The recent exploit has forced Bunni’s growth to a halt, and to securely relaunch, we’d need to pay six to seven figures in audit and monitoring expenses — capital we simply don’t have,” they explained. The team also noted they could not cover the development and operational costs needed to restore the protocol.
Bunni’s closure follows closely behind the founding team of the layer-1 blockchain Kadena, who announced they would cease operations due to challenging market conditions.
The exploit occurred on September 2, when attackers drained $8.4 million across Ethereum and the layer-2 network Unichain, forcing the protocol to halt operations immediately. Bunni DEX was built on Uniswap v4 to enhance returns for liquidity providers via a custom Liquidity Distribution Function. Before the breach, Bunni had experienced rapid growth, with its TVL soaring from $2.23 million on June 10 to nearly $80 million by August 19, as reported by DefiLlama.
Despite shutting down, the Bunni team has re-licensed its v2 smart contracts from the Business Source License to the MIT open-source license, earning community praise. This move enables developers to freely use Bunni’s innovations, including liquidity distribution functions, surge fees, and autonomous rebalancing. Users can still withdraw their assets from the website until further notice.
Remaining treasury assets will be distributed to BUNNI, LIT, and veBUNNI token holders following legal approvals. However, team members will not receive any funds. The team remains committed to collaborating with law enforcement to recover the stolen $8.4 million.
Meanwhile, the Kadena founding team’s decision will not halt the network itself, which will continue as a community-driven project, although its native token KDA has plummeted 70% since the announcement and currently trades at $0.06 according to CoinGecko.