Solana DeFi mission Friktion shuts down its consumer platform

by Jeremy

Solana decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Friktion is shutting down its consumer interface and urging clients to withdraw their belongings from the protocol, in accordance to a press release on Jan. 26. 

The mission’s web site will now not ship the identical companies, working in a withdrawal-only mode for all Volts and making deposits unavailable. Friktion’s Volts are structured merchandise for DeFi investments that permit buyers to earn a share of the income of funding swimming pools, based on the corporate’s web page.

The underlying protocol, nevertheless, will stay accessible on-chain. As cited by the corporate, the “powerful marketplace for DeFi development in latest months” was the driving drive behind the stakeholders’ choice:

“This choice was not made calmly, as Friktion has efficiently navigated quite a lot of challenges previously, together with Luna, FTX, and community outages. The corporate stays a powerful believer in the way forward for Solana DeFi and can proceed to help the ecosystem the place it might probably.” 

Friktion’s software reached almost 20,000 consumer wallets, passing $3 billion in traded quantity and reaching over $160 million in whole worth locked (TVL) within the first half of 2022 earlier than being impacted by the crypto winter. In November 2022, the corporate even launched undercollateralized lending focusing on institutional buyers’ demand for DeFi. 

The choice to close down its consumer interface comes almost a yr after the corporate introduced it had raised $5.5 million in a funding spherical in January 2022. Traders within the spherical included Soar Crypto, DeFiance Capital, Delphi Ventures, Solana Ventures and Tribe Capital amongst others.

Among the many names on the platform’s board was Alameda Analysis, FTX’s sister firm that performed an important function within the alternate’s collapse in November 2022. Different board members included Genesis Buying and selling, LedgerPrime, CMS Holdings and Orthogonal Buying and selling.

Friktion didn’t instantly reply to Cointelegraph’s requests for feedback.