After 18 months of recovery efforts, Radiant Capital announced Monday it is shutting down operations due to its inability to recover from a $50 million hack that occurred in October 2024. According to reports from The Block, the omnichain money market suffered an exploit on its Arbitrum and BNB Chain instances after an attacker deployed a backdoor contract to gain unauthorized access. The firm stated that "the DAO no longer has a viable path forward" and that contributors and the community "worked to support users, maintain the protocol, and pursue recovery" but "effort alone is not enough without recovery, capital, or growth." In a June 1 Medium post, the DAO officially announced it will begin an "orderly wind-down," with active development stopping immediately. The decision follows a prolonged recovery effort after the security breach, with the DAO citing the lack of recovered funds, unsuccessful fundraising efforts, and the absence of grants needed to sustain operations.
The October 2024 exploit resulted in $51 million in losses across Arbitrum and BNB Chain instances, as reported by Arkham Intelligence. According to Mandiant, the cybersecurity firm hired for on-device forensics, the attack was linked to UNC4736, a threat actor identified as part of North Korea's cyber ecosystem. The attackers gained control of three of Radiant's eleven multisig signer permissions and replaced the lending pool's implementation contract, allowing them to steal approximately $53 million from the Arbitrum and BNB Chain deployments. The tactics used in this attack later surfaced in other major crypto incidents, with Drift Protocol reporting in April 2026 that the same actors were responsible for a separate exploit against its platform. Previous recovery efforts have produced limited results, with CertiK reporting in October 2025 that wallets linked to the attacker deposited 2,834 ETH into Tornado Cash, complicating efforts to trace and recover the stolen assets.
According to The Block, Radiant Capital will transition into a maintenance-focused phase where the frontend and smart contracts remain live and accessible. Users can continue to withdraw, repay, and manage positions during this transition period, though several changes take effect immediately as part of the wind-down process. Borrowing has been disabled across Core and RIZv1 markets, while RDNT token emissions have been discontinued. Treasury spending will be restricted to essential activities including user support, maintenance of claims infrastructure, and ongoing recovery efforts. The protocol's website, documentation, Discord and Telegram will remain available through the end of the year, while its X account will stay active indefinitely for recovery updates. Smart contracts will also remain accessible on-chain, meaning users can still withdraw funds, repay loans, or close lending positions. The DAO encouraged users to reduce exposure and actively manage their positions as operational support declines. As of the latest data, Radiant Capital still holds $1.17 million in TVL across Arbitrum, Ethereum, Base, and BSC, with active loans hovering around $866,000, indicating that users continue managing positions despite the shutdown.
Launched in 2022, Radiant Capital was a cross-chain lending protocol that allowed users to deposit assets on one chain and borrow supported assets across others. In July 2023, Binance Labs, Binance's venture arm, invested $10 million in Radiant to support product development. However, the DAO stated it hasn't recovered any meaningful funds through zeroShadow, secured no new outside investment, or received no grants large enough to rebuild its operating runway. The protocol's TVL peaked above $350 million by early 2024, with daily fees and revenue frequently exceeding $100,000, but momentum weakened through mid-2024 as TVL fell below $200 million and continued declining toward near-zero levels. The decision follows two security shocks in 2024, where in January 2024, Radiant suffered an approximately 1,900 ETH flash-loan attack that the DAO later used treasury funds to cover communal bad debt through a governance vote, cutting into its remaining reserves. Market reaction to the closure announcement remained negative, with the protocol's RDNT token falling 4.2% after the news, and following the wind-down announcement, the token plummeted 4.4% to trade at $0.001444, according to CoinGecko data, bringing the altcoin's total decline to 99.1% from its all-time high of $0.5853 recorded in September 2022.
Despite the operational shutdown, Radiant Capital's underlying governance framework will continue to exist. The project's Cayman Islands foundation remains active, while the protocol's smart contracts remain immutable and publicly accessible. The foundation will also retain control of the Radiant brand, trademarks, and intellectual property. Any future community-led revival or continuation effort would need to present a security and governance framework, address users affected by the October 2024 exploit, and obtain alignment with the existing DAO structure. The wind-down leaves several planned initiatives unfinished, including more than 150 planned isolated lending markets under the RIZv2 framework, expanded Guardian Fund protections, new vault infrastructure, incentive systems, and cross-chain capital efficiency upgrades. The DAO acknowledged that recovery outcomes remain uncertain given the complexity of blockchain investigations and asset recovery efforts, with efforts to recover stolen funds remaining ongoing through the remediation portal. Radiant's team framed the closure as a broader lesson for the industry, arguing that DeFi is shifting toward what they call DeFi 3.0, where security is no longer a feature but the actual product institutions evaluate, with allocators caring more about structural properties than nominal yields and risk isolation becoming essential for protocol success.
