Solana-based decentralized exchange (DEX) Project Serum has informed its community that it is now dead due to the failure of its investors, FTX and Alameda.
Despite the project’s ongoing challenges, the team behind it stated that “there is hope” because of the option to “fork” Serum.
What's next for @ProjectSerum
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.
— Serum (@ProjectSerum) November 29, 2022
“A community-wide effort to fork Serum is underway,” according to the announcement. OpenBook, a community-led fork of the Serum v3 program, is already live on Solana and has over $1 million daily volume, with ongoing efforts to expand and grow its liquidity.
In August 2020, Serum served as the governance token for the decentralized Solana-based exchange, which FTX and Alameda Research also backed.
Since FTX’s shocking collapse, Project Serum has been plagued by uncertainty. Despite being advertised as decentralized, some well-known developers have speculated that someone at FTX may have had access to the exchange’s keys, including Max Schneider, co-founder of cryptocurrency exchange Mango Markets.
Serum’s volume and liquidity have dropped to near-zero
“With the existence of Openbook, Serum’s volume and liquidity have dropped to near-zero,” Project Serum tweeted. Given the unknown security risks associated with the “old Serum code” compromised in the FTX hack, users and protocols are safer using OpenBook.
The DEX stated that the “future of SRM is uncertain,” with community members divided on the subject. Some argue that it should be used “for discounts,” while others say it should not be used due to its proximity to FTX and Alameda.
On November 12, Cointelegraph reported that FTX had been hacked, with wallets associated with FTX and FTX US being drained of $659 million.
Developers of Solana forked Serum, a popular hub for token liquidity, after several unlawful transactions hacked it following the FTX attack.
Afaik, the devs that depend on serum are forking the program because the upgrade key to the current one is compromised. This has nothing to do with SRM or even Jump. A ton of protocols depend on serum markets for liquidity and liquidations.
— toly 🇺🇸 (@aeyakovenko) November 12, 2022
Anatoly Yakovenko, a co-founder of Solana, tweeted that Serum’s developers were forking their code after learning that the upgrade key had been hacked. He further stated that many “protocols depend on serum markets for liquidity and liquidations.”
