Three Solana-based platforms have announced they are shutting down following a Step Finance hack in late January that was deemed unrecoverable.
The Solana portfolio dashboard and DeFi aggregator Step Finance announced on Monday that it would cease operations. The closure also applies to subsidiaries Solana NFT Analytics and ecosystem media channel SolanaFloor, as well as credit and returns protocol Remora Markets.
“Following the hack in late January, we explored every possible path forward, including financing and acquisition options,” the company said, referring to a $27 million security breach of its Treasury portfolios in January.
The team said they were “unable to achieve an achievable outcome,” resulting in the decision to “cease all operations with immediate effect.”
The DeFi platform said it is working on a buyback for holders of its native token, STEP, based on a snapshot taken before the incident. There will also be a redemption process for Remora rToken holders, they said.
Source: Remora Markets
Step suffers a $27 million security breach
Step Finance reported a “security breach for some of our treasury portfolios” on January 31 and asked cybersecurity firms to help with the investigation.
Blockchain security company CertiK reported that 261,854 Solana ($SOL), worth approximately $27 million at the time, was not deployed and was transferred during the incident.
Related: Solana Treasuries are sitting on more than $1.5 billion in paper $SOL to lose
Crypto investor Mike Dudas said he was approached by Step Finance about participating in a bridge round, but first requested a security screening and received no response.
Step Finance co-founder George Harrap said on Tuesday: “Some people have reached out about acquiring several companies, and we will pursue that if they are serious and interested, but we are in a time crunch.”
The platform’s native STEP token fell 96% in the days following the hack. It fell another 36% after announcing the close on Monday and is currently trading at $0.00057, according to CoinGecko.
STEP reached an all-time high of $10.20 in August 2021.
STEP prices have fallen to virtually zero. Source: Coin gecko
Solana DeFi total value locked tanks 50%
The triple shutdown is another blow to decentralized finance on Solana, where total value on the chain has fallen 52% since its peak in September. According to DeFiLlama, Solana DeFi TVL is currently just $6.3 billion.
In the meantime, $SOL According to CoinGecko, prices fell another 1.8% that day, to $78. The asset is now down 74% from its January 2025 all-time high of $293, which was reached during the peak of the memecoin mania.
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