Radiant Capital winds down DAO after $50M exploit recovery fails

Radiant Capital began an orderly wind-down of its decentralized autonomous organization on June 1, 2026, after 18 months of recovery work failed to retrieve more than $50 million taken in an October 2024 exploit. The protocol announced the decision and outlined steps to protect users and preserve access to funds.

Forensic firm zeroShadow worked with Radiant on recovery efforts, but the teams were unable to recover funds after a private key compromise allowed a malicious actor to control multi-signature wallets in October 2024. The breach followed an earlier January 2024 flash loan attack that removed about 1,900 ETH and forced the DAO to use treasury funds to cover communal bad debt, reducing operating reserves.

Radiant cited declining revenue, falling user retention and the lack of new capital as reasons to stop active development. With no new strategic investors, allocators or ecosystem grants committing funds, the DAO prioritized user safety and completion of remediation tasks over product expansion.

Under the wind-down plan, deployed smart contracts remain immutable and on-chain so users retain direct control to withdraw funds, repay loans, close lending positions, claim rewards and unlock DLP tokens. Borrowing has been disabled across all Core and RIZv1 markets, RDNT token emissions have ceased, and treasury spending is limited to operations tied to user safety and recovery work.

The protocol said its website and front end will remain online through the end of the year to support access to funds and positions. Community channels on Discord, Telegram and X will stay active for support but with reduced response times and limited operational intervention. The remediation portal will remain available indefinitely and zeroShadow will continue recovery work within available resources; any funds recovered will be returned directly to affected users.

Market reaction followed the announcement. RDNT fell about 4.4% to roughly $0.001444 and is down about 99.1% from its September 2022 peak of $0.5853.

Radiant framed the closure as a lesson for protocol design. The team wrote, “Protocols should be designed with containment measures and pre-built recovery plans so investors and users can judge them by how they contain and remediate failures.” The statement emphasized structural features such as risk isolation, deterministic behavior under stress and operational security as factors allocators consider when committing capital.

For users the protocol said on-chain positions remain accessible and remediation will continue, but borrowers should not expect new credit facilities or token incentives to resume. Radiant’s remaining resources will be dedicated to recovery and support until those tasks are complete or the treasury is exhausted.