Radiant Capital, a decentralized omnichain money market protocol built on LayerZero, has announced plans to shut down after failing to recover from an exploit it suffered more than a year ago.

 

The decision to cease operations stems from the protocol's inability to recover from losses of more than $50 million due to a security exploit in 2024. According to the team, the DAO no longer has a viable path forward, as there has been no meaningful recovery of funds and no new capital raised since the incident.

 

"Over the past months, contributors and the community continued to operate under increasingly difficult conditions, working to support users, maintain the protocol, and pursue recovery. That effort was real. And it was consistent. But effort alone is not enough without recovery, capital, or growth," the team wrote in a post on X.

 

Although the decision to wind down operations has already been made, the Radiant team said the shutdown will not happen immediately. The protocol's front end will remain live, smart contracts will remain accessible on chain, and users will continue to be able to withdraw funds, repay loans, and manage their positions.

 

The protocol will transition into maintenance mode, with no further development, upgrades, or expansion planned. Borrow caps will be set to zero, and RDNT token emissions will be discontinued.

 

Despite its decision to wind down, the Radiant team said it will continue efforts to recover the stolen funds. To support this process, the protocol's remediation portal will remain active to ensure that any recovered funds are returned to affected users.

 

The Radiant Capital Exploit

On October 16, 2024, Radiant Capital was hit by a sophisticated social engineering and malware attack. The attackers, reportedly linked to North Korean threat actors, deployed the malware via a fake Telegram message impersonating a former Radiant team member.

 

When members of the Radiant engineering team attempted to sign what appeared to be legitimate transactions in the protocol's Gnosis Safe wallet, the malware intercepted the requests and replaced them with malicious transactions in the background.

 

After gaining control of the protocol's 3-of-11 multisignature wallet, the attackers upgraded the pool provider contract and drained roughly $53 million from the protocol's lending pools on Arbitrum and BNB Chain. The exploit triggered a sharp decline in the protocol's total value locked (TVL), which fell from more than $300 million before the attack to approximately $75 million afterward.

 

 

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, has introduced into its wallet application, prediction market, a new feature that allows users to participate in probability-based markets directly from the Binance wallet app. 

 

This feature was made possible through the integration of Predict.fun, an independent decentralized prediction market platform built on the BNB Chain, with Binance explicitly stating the integration of more prediction market platforms into its app in the future. 

 

With the integration of Predict.fun into its wallet app as well as other future prediction market integration, Binance aims to tap into the over $20 billion prediction markets volume, going toe-to-toe with giant prediction market platforms Kalshi and Polymarket which both account for 85–90% of the total global prediction market volume.

 

To encourage the mass adoption and use of this new prediction market feature, Binance is offering a gasless trading experience for all users. Thus, all trading fees incurred will be sponsored and catered for Binance itself, thereby making it very easy for its over 300 million users tap into the growing crypto prediction markets. 

 

Image credit: Binance

 

The Binance prediction market feature will also support market and limit orders, allowing traders execute trades immediately at the current best market price or leave immediately, without delay, as well as allowing traders execute trades at their specified price or even better. 

 

The Current State of Prediction Markets

Crypto prediction markets have grown rapidly in recent times, evolving from a niche segment of the crypto industry into a major sector in global finance. The global monthly trading volume across prediction market platforms has consistently exceeded 20 billion dollars, with last month recording approximately 25.7 billion dollars in trading volume.

 

Despite the high monthly trading volume and the growing number of unique crypto wallets actively trading across different platforms, prediction market companies have faced several regulatory challenges. This is especially true for the two largest platforms, Kalshi and Polymarket, whose trading volumes together account for about 92 to 93 percent of global prediction market activity.

 

Although the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the federal regulator in the United States, has recently moved to defend prediction market companies from strict regulatory actions imposed by several states, the activities of these companies remain restricted in at least 11 states.

 

The services of Polymarket remain blocked in about 33 countries, while Kalshi is restricted in about 50 jurisdictions, although it is still available in roughly 140 countries.