Radiant Capital Ends DAO Operations 18 Months After $50 Million Exploit

Radiant Capital announced an orderly wind-down of its DAO operations after 18 months of failed efforts to recover the more than $50 million lost in the devastating October 2024 exploit.

We break down the reasons behind the closure, what happens to users, and the key lessons it leaves for DeFi.

What the Radiant Capital Wind-Down Really Means

A DeFi wind-down is the orderly closure of a protocol while keeping smart contracts accessible so users can still withdraw funds and manage positions. Radiant Capital began exactly that process on June 1, 2026.

The final trigger was clear. After 18 months of work alongside zeroShadow, the DAO failed to recover any of the funds stolen in the critical October 2024 exploit that drained more than $50 million from the protocol.

The hack followed an earlier blow. In January 2024, a flash loan attack worth around 1,900 ETH had already forced the DAO to use treasury funds to cover communal bad debt and reduce its operating reserves significantly.

New capital never arrived either. No strategic investors, allocators, or ecosystem grants stepped in to extend the runway, while user trust, retention, and overall protocol revenue continued declining month after month.

Under those conditions, continuing operations would have meant maintaining limited functionality without a clear path forward. The DAO decided to halt active development and focus exclusively on user safety and ongoing recovery work.

The deployed smart contracts remain fully immutable and accessible on-chain. Users keep complete control to withdraw funds, repay loans, close lending positions, claim rewards, and unlock their DLP tokens directly.

Key Changes for Users and Lessons for DeFi 3.0

Several changes take effect immediately. Borrowing is disabled across all Core and RIZv1 markets, RDNT token emissions are discontinued, and treasury usage will be restricted to essential operations only.

The website and front-end will stay live through the end of the year. Discord, Telegram, and X will remain active for support, although with reduced response times and limited operational intervention from contributors.

Following the announcement, the RDNT token plummeted 4.4% to trade at $0.001444, according to CoinGecko data. This brings the altcoin’s total decline to 99.1% from its all-time high of $0.5853, recorded in September 2022.

Recovery work has not ended. The remediation portal will remain online indefinitely, zeroShadow stays engaged within available resources, and any recovered funds will be distributed directly to the users affected by the October 2024 exploit.

Radiant’s team also framed the closure as a broader lesson for the industry. They argue that DeFi is shifting toward what they call DeFi 3.0, where security is no longer a feature but the actual product institutions evaluate.

In this new phase, allocators care more about structural properties than nominal yields. Risk isolation, deterministic behavior under stress, operational security, and credible recovery pathways now define which protocols deserve serious capital allocation today.

Their final message is direct. Future protocols will likely be judged by how they fail, not just by how they perform under ideal conditions, making containment design and pre-built recovery plans essential.