Bunni, the second crypto project to crumble this week citing insurmountable financial hurdles, shows a disheartening blow to the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector. The news, shared via an X post on Thursday, underpins the fragility of even the most promising crypto projects in today’s volatile market.
Earlier this week, Kadena crypto project, a layer-1 blockchain also announced its exit owing to brutal market conditions. While Kadena’s network will persist under community governance, its native token, KDA, plummeted 70% to $0.06.
The devastating Bunni crypto project hack
In September Bunni project, built on Uniswap v4, fell victim to an $8.4 million exploit that drained its resources and halted operations.
“The recent exploit has forced Bunni’s growth to a halt,” the team stated.
“To securely relaunch, we’d need to pay six to seven figures in audit and monitoring expenses alone, and that’s capital we simply don’t have.”
The crypto project faced mounting development costs and operational expenses, leaving it unable to recover from the devastating hack.
The September exploit targeted Bunni’s codebase, siphoning $8.4 million across Ethereum and layer-2 network Unichain, immediately suspending operations.
Before the attack, Bunni crypto project had been a rising star in DeFi, with its total value locked (TVL) soaring from $2.23 million in June to nearly $80 million by mid-August, according to DefiLlama.
Nevertheless, in a bittersweet move, Bunni’s team decided to relicense its v2 smart contracts from a restrictive Business Source License to the open-source MIT license.
This shift allows developers worldwide to leverage Bunni’s innovations, such as liquidity distribution functions, surge fees, and autonomous rebalancing.
The decision has earned praise from parts of the DeFi community, who see it as a silver lining amid the crypto project’s collapse.
“This ensures our work lives on, even if we can’t,” the team noted, emphasizing their commitment to the broader ecosystem.
The loss of two major crypto projects in a single week leaves the community grappling with uncertainty. Will this improve in the weeks to come? I guess we will have to wait and see.
