FTX-backed DEX Serum is ‘defunct’ and encourages a community fork

The Solana-based exchange protocol Serum announced its demise on Twitter.

Serum, a decentralized crypto exchange funded by FTX, alerted its 215,000 Twitter followers that the project is “dead” after the abrupt collapse of the crypto exchange giant, directing users to a community-led fork of the project.

Following FTX’s downfall, Serum announced that its mainnet program has become inactive. “As upgrade authority is controlled by FTX, security is at risk, resulting in protocols like Jupiter and Radium leaving the Solana blockchain,” it continued, referring to two DeFi initiatives.

This month, the defunct FTX exchange was hacked for more than $400 million, compromising the security of Serum’s programming. Serum said that this was because the “update authority” for its programming was kept only by FTX exchange insiders.

The company also remarked on its native Serum (SRM) coin, claiming that its future was “uncertain” and that developers had advocated discontinuing its usage owing to exposure to FTX and its sibling trading platform Alameda Research.

Serum also noted the rise of OpenBook, a community-driven fork of the protocol that has gone live on Solana. OpenBook processes a daily volume of over $1 million, but Serum’s volume and liquidity are now close to nil, as stated by Serum.

It’s no secret that after the launch of Openbook, Serum’s volume and liquidity has fallen to almost nothing. After discovering security issues in the old Serum code, users and protocols are secure when using an alternate branch such as OpenBook, according to the developers.

As the hack became public knowledge, Serum’s code could not be upgraded securely in time to address any vulnerabilities. Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana, and other engineers proposed forking the source in response. Mango Max, who is also the creator of the financing initiative Mango Markets, lead the fork.

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