Serum (SRM) Backs Community Hard Fork Plans After FTX Collapse

Serum (SRM) – the Solana-based DEX protocol launched in part by FTX – is seeking a fresh restart after FTX’s fallout left the project’s security permanently compromised. 

The new project – called Openbook – will be community-led, and may or may possibly discard the SRM token entirely. 

Serum’s New Beginning

In a Twitter thread on Tuesday, Serum explained that the collapse of FTX and Alameda has left its program effectively “defunct.” 

“As upgrade authority is held by FTX, security is in jeopardy, leading to protocols like Jupiter and Raydium moving away from Serum,” the team wrote. Jupiter, a DEX aggregator on Solana, informed users on November 12th that SRM would be disabled as a liquidity source.In addition, Binance disabled a series of trading pairs last week which affected tokens including SRM. 

Jupiter added that it would support an upcoming ecosystem fork, which Serum itself has now acknowledged. Leading the movement is Mango Markets co-founder Max Schneider, whose protocol was drained in a price manipulation attack last month. 

The new Openbook project has already amassed $1 million in daily trading volume. It includes pools for SOL/USDC, USDT/USDC, MSOL/USDC, and wheETH/USDC, while continuing to provide fee discounts for SRM holders. 

According to Serum, more efforts are underway to expand Openbooks liquidity and products. However, given its success, the old Serum protocol has fallen to near-zero trading activity. 

Meanwhile, the future of the SRM token still hangs in the balance. 

“There are proposals from the community suggesting it to still be used for discounts and other proposals to not use it at all because of the exposure that FTX/Alameda have,” said Serum. The team called for community feedback on how to structure the project going forwards and encouraged followers to transition to Openbook. 

Serum’s History With FTX

Serum was first launched by a consortium of closely involved crypto industry giants: FTX, Alameda Research, and the Solana Foundation. 

FTX’s bankruptcy put SRM in the spotlight after a leaked balance sheet from the firm this month revealed it had $2 billion worth of the token on its books. By comparison, the company had 0 Bitcoin listed within its assets. 

The Solana foundation has disclosed last week that it held over 130 million SRM tokens on FTX, worth over $100 million at the start of the month. Those funds – alongside 3 million FTT tokens – remain trapped within the insolvent exchange. 

According to CoinGecko, SRM’s price tanked from $0.80 on November 6th (when FTX’s liquidity troubles began) to $0.24 at writing time.