Decentralized exchange Bunni has announced its closure after suffering an exploit worth $8.4 million in September. This marks the second crypto project to shut down this week.

In a post shared on Thursday through X, the team explained that operational winds are down due to insufficient funds.

“The recent exploit has forced Bunni’s growth to a halt, and in order to securely relaunch, we’d need to pay 6-7 figures in audit & monitoring expenses alone — requiring capital that we simply don’t have.”

Translation: “The recent exploitation has halted Bunni’s growth, and to relaunch securely, we need substantial funds for audits and monitoring, which we lack.”

The team acknowledged that they lacked the necessary resources for development and operational costs required to revive the protocol.

Bunni’s closure comes shortly after the Kadena blockchain team announced its own termination of operations, citing challenging market conditions.

Bunni DEX Source: Bunni

Security Breach in September

Bunni was compromised on September 2, losing $8.4 million across Ethereum and Unichain. Operations were subsequently halted.

The protocol was founded on Uniswap v4 and was designed to enhance returns for liquidity providers via its Liquidity Distribution Function.

In a blog post dated September 4, Bunni detailed how the exploit occurred through vulnerabilities in its codebase.

Code Open-Sourcing

Despite shutting down, the team has decided to relaunch Bunni v2 smart contracts under an MIT license. This will allow developers to utilize the features created by Bunni, including liquidity distribution functions, surge fees, and autonomous rebalancing.

The team also announced that users can withdraw their assets via their platform until further notice, and remaining treasury assets will be allocated to BUNNI, LIT, and veBUNNI token holders following necessary legal approvals. Notably, team members will not receive any remaining funds.

Additionally, the team is engaging with law enforcement to retrieve the stolen $8.4 million.

Kadena Team’s Exit

On Tuesday, the Kadena founding team declared that it would wind down and discontinue network operations due to adverse market conditions.

While the team has exited, the Kadena network will persist and become community-managed. However, since the announcement, the token KDA has plummeted by 70%, currently trading at $0.06.