FTX-backed DEX Serum becomes ‘defunct’

Cryptocurrency news since the collapse of FTX earlier this month has featured more and more on the impact of the implosion on other businesses. As we reported earlier today, crypto lender BlockFi filed for bankruptcy, with FTX’s collapse the main factor behind it.

And now, decentralised crypto exchange Serum – which is one of the many FTX-backed projects falling amid greater contagion – has announced it’s now ‘defunct’.

FTX implosion renders Serum ‘defunct’

Serum was founded in August 2020 by a group including FTX, Alameda Research and the Solana Foundation. The project was launched on Solana, one of the leading blockchains for decentralised finance (DeFi).

According to an announcement tweeted earlier Tuesday, the unfortunate event follows FTX and Alameda’s implosion. Pointing to what the future held for Serum, whose native token SRM was trading around $0.244 at the time of writing, the team wrote:

“With the collapse of Alameda and FTX, the Serum program on mainnet became defunct. As upgrade authority is held by FTX, security is in jeopardy, leading to protocols like @JupiterExchange and @RaydiumProtocol moving away from Serum.”

Per the team, the current state of affairs has seen the emergence of an initiative to fork the project.

What does this mean for Serum?

Unfortunately, with Openbook's existence Serum's volume and liquidity has dropped to near-zero. Users and protocols are safe using an alternative fork such as Openbook, after finding out security risks on the old Serum code.

— Serum (@ProjectSerum) November 29, 2022

What next for SRM?

The SRM token has dropped nearly 70% in the past month, with more than 3% of losses seen in the past 24 hours as pessimism kicks in following the news of Serum being ‘defunct’. With Serum’s liquidity and volume cratering to near zero, the team feels SRM’s future is “uncertain.”

“The future of SRM is uncertain. There are proposals from the community suggesting it to still be used for discounts and other proposals to not use it at all because of the exposure that FTX/Alameda have.”

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