ZKX founder responds to questions about suspension: $7.6 million raised from 2021 to 2024 to support team operations

In response to "why ZKX announced its closure after raising $7.6 million in funds and TGE just started a few weeks ago", Eduard, the founder of derivative DEX ZKX, responded on the X platform: "The previous $7.6 million in financing was raised from 2021 to 2024 to support a team of 30 people to build a dedicated blockchain for scaling perps. A total of 4 years, this includes multiple code audits with Nethermind, TGE listing costs, fees on AWS (running L3 on the cloud is expensive), developer adoption activities for Cairo programming, and more. All user funds have been refunded, and more than 80% of users have withdrawn from the protocol (the main wallet is self-custodial). The core founders did not sell any of their allocated tokens, unfortunately, 4 Years of work and lives gone. People also don’t talk about all the community pressure, exploits, scams, and hacks that DeFi teams have had to endure. We did our best to protect our customers’ funds, and Binance knew who some of the attackers were. In hindsight, choosing to run a fully on-chain smart contract protocol instead of L3 and other strategic decisions may have been financially wiser. We learned a hard lesson. ” Previously, the derivatives trading protocol ZKX announced that it would cease operations, reminding users to withdraw funds by the end of August.