Unable to recover from roughly $50 million hack, Radiant Capital is winding down

After spending 18 months trying to get back on track, Radiant Capital said Monday it is calling it quits, unable to recover from a roughly $50 million hack.

Radiant Capital said it hasn't been able to recover a meaningful amount of funds since the 2024 exploit or raise fresh capital, so it plans to close operations, the firm said in an X post.

"The DAO no longer has a viable path forward," Radiant said. "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."

Back in October 2024, the omnichain money market Radiant Capital suffered an exploit on its Arbitrum and BNB Chain instances after an attacker deployed a backdoor contract to gain unauthorized access, Arkham Intelligence said at the time. 

"Radiant capital has fallen victim to a hack causing $51 million in losses so far across Arbitrum and BNB chain," a security researcher told The Block in 2024. "The Ethereum and Base deployments seem to be secure but we would warn anyone to be careful interacting with these contracts at this time."

That attack came a few months after a flash loan attack that drained around 1900 ETH, worth $4.5 million at the time, from the Radiant protocol in early 2024.

Now, Radiant will transition into a "maintenance state" where the frontend and smart contracts remain live and accessible. "Users can withdraw, repay, and manage positions," Radiant said, adding that recovery efforts continue. If any funds are retrieved, they will be returned to those affected, Radiant said.

Exploits continue to be a problem across crypto. Recently, DeFi Llama said the number of crypto hacks rose to a record monthly high in April. While the cumulative dollar amount of funds stolen didn't set any new records, the total number of exploits in April easily exceeded 20 for what looks like the first time ever, DeFi Llama said.