Defunct Crypto DEX Etherdelta Still Holds $42M in Customer Assets

Conor Grogan, a director at Coinbase, one of the leading crypto exchanges, updated the crypto community about a decentralized exchange (DEX) that phased out of the market with many people’s assets trapped inside.

The DEX was Etherdelta, one of the first exchanges launched in 2016, which, unfortunately, shut down due to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)’s enforcement against its founders.

However, according to Grogan, Etherdelta’s smart contracts still operated. Interestingly, Etherdelta still holds $42 million in assets, most of which Grogan believes the owners have about.

Etherdelta, one of the first «DEXs,» was launched way back in 2016. The front-end was shuttered in 2018 after the SEC cracked down on the founders, but the smart contracts still operate.

Today they still hold $42M in assets, most of which I think people simply forgot about pic.twitter.com/snmMzmuRFv

— Conor (@jconorgrogan) February 4, 2023

Furthermore, the Coinbase director shared a list of wallet addresses with at least 0.1 Ethereum tokens on the smart contract, adding that the funds are withdrawable via contracts.

In 2018, the SEC slammed charges against EtherDelta founder Zachary Coburn. The suit represented the regulator’s first enforcement action against an unregistered digital asset manager. The SEC alleged that EtherDelta did not obtain a regulatory permit before allowing customers to place over 3.6 million ERC20 tokens.

In other news, Everlend Finance, a Solana-based DeFi lending protocol, has asked its customers to move out their funds that it was shutting down its app platform. The project noted it has enough resources to remain afloat. However, it has decided to halt, as pressing forwards with its current condition would be equivalent to gambling.

We are deeply saddened to announce that as of today our team has decided to close down https://t.co/UiTuuSdyrB and won’t continue its development

— Everlend (@EverlendFinance) February 1, 2023

At the peak of its operation, Everlend controlled almost $400,000 in total value locked, according to DeFiLlama. This figure declined significantly in November amid the collapse of FTX when funds exited protocols in the Solana ecosystem.

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