Update Feb. 24, 9:21 am UTC: This article has been updated to include Step Finance’s estimate that approximately $40 million was drained from its treasury.
Three Solana-based platforms have announced they are shutting down after a Step Finance hack at the end of January that has been deemed unrecoverable.
Solana portfolio dashboard and DeFi aggregator Step Finance announced on Monday that it would be winding down operations. The closure also extends to subsidiaries Solana NFT analytics and the ecosystem media outlet SolanaFloor, as well as lending and yield protocol Remora Markets.
“Following the hack at the end of January, we explored every possible path forward, including financing and acquisition opportunities,” it stated, referring to a $40 million security breach of its treasury wallets in January.
The team said they were “unable to secure a viable outcome,” resulting in the decision to “end all operations effective immediately.”
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.
Step suffers $40 million security breach
Step Finance reported a “breach of security for some of our treasury wallets” on Jan. 31 and asked cybersecurity firms to assist with the investigation.
Blockchain security firm CertiK reported that 261,854 Solana (SOL), worth roughly $27 million at the time, was unstaked and transferred during the incident.
Step Finance later announced that the total amount drained from its treasury was approximately $40 million.
Related: Solana treasuries sitting on over $1.5B in paper SOL losses
Crypto investor Mike Dudas said he was contacted by Step Finance about participating in a bridge round, but requested a security post-mortem first and received no response.
Step Finance co-founder George Harrap said on Tuesday that “Some people have reached out on acquiring various businesses, and we will pursue those if serious and have interest, but we are on a time crunch.”
The platform’s native STEP token tanked 96% in the days following the hack. It slumped a further 36% following the announcement of the closure on Monday and is currently trading at $0.00057, according to CoinGecko.
STEP hit an all-time high of $10.20 in August 2021.
Solana DeFi total value locked tanks 50%
The triple closure is another blow to decentralized finance on Solana, which has seen total on-chain value tank 52% since its September peak. Solana DeFi TVL currently stands at just $6.3 billion, according to DeFiLlama.
Meanwhile, SOL prices have lost a further 1.8% on the day, falling to $78, according to CoinGecko. The asset is now 74% down from its January 2025 all-time high of $293, hit during the peak of memecoin mania.
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