- Fuji Finance is shutting down over a failure to achieve market fit and secure additional investment.
- The money market aggregator is the latest DeFi lending protocol to close in 2023.
- Fuji users have until the end of the year to withdraw their assets from the platform.
DeFi cross-chain money market aggregator Fuji Finance is shutting down, citing an inability to attract additional investors.
Money market aggregators in DeFi allow users to manage and potentially maximise their yields across different lending and borrowing protocols.
As a cross-chain protocol, Fuji’s aggregation service covered different blockchains including Ethereum, Arbitrum, and Fantom, among others.
Fuji has been courting investors since February to raise additional development funds, but to no avail, co-founder Mark Anstead said in a Wednesday announcement.
“We were unable to find product market fit,” Anstead said. “With our treasury dwindling, we decided that we needed to begin to close down the company and end operations, with no end in sight for the fundraise.”
Fuji is the latest of small DeFi protocols that have been unable to navigate the crypto bear market, which kicked in from 2021.
The project is also among DeFi money market participants that have shuttered during this period. These include Flint Labs, Ruler, Cover, Everlend, Algofi, Hundred Finance, Spirit Swap, and Saddle Finance.
These shutdowns have happened across different blockchains including Ethereum, Solana, and Algorand. Their leadership teams have all blamed a combination of funding issues, dwindling treasuries, and a lack of market fit.
The trend lends credence to fears of investor apathy for DeFi.
Dojo Dujoor, the former main contributor to Algorand DeFi major Pact, recently said investors have deemed Algorand projects “uninvestable.” Dujoor said this while quitting Pact last month.
Compound founder Robert Leshner recently said institutional investors are not coming to DeFi, but are instead interested in using the technology to trade traditional assets like stocks, bonds, commodities, and currencies.
The protocol’s chief technology officer, Boyan Barakov, assured users on Fuji’s Discord that the team will maintain the front-end website until Dec. 31, but advised them to close their positions as soon as possible.
Users who fail to do so will have to interact with the protocol’s smart contract to withdraw their funds. Fuji holds about $307,000 in user funds across both versions of its protocol.
Users with open debt positions in Fuji V1 on the Fantom blockchain may be unable to withdraw funds.
This has nothing to do with Fuji shutting down, but is connected to the July closure of Geist Finance, a Fantom-based liquidity market protocol where their funds are domiciled.
Osato Avan-Nomayo is our Nigeria-based DeFi correspondent. He covers DeFi and tech. To share tips or information about stories, please contact him at osato@dlnews.com.