Vega Protocol network team will close the project and stop supporting the VEGA native token

What’s new? The community of the Layer 1 (L1) blockchain Vega Protocol, focused on derivatives trading, unanimously voted in favor of closing the project and discontinuing support for the native token VEGA. Trading on all markets was automatically halted as a result of the vote.

Source: X.com

What else is known? According to the team, the decision to close was made due to the low popularity of Vega Protocol among developers as a network for creating decentralized applications (DApps) for derivatives trading.

The team will now only use its resources to develop and maintain the core software. Vega core developers will also continue to support the Nebula decentralized exchange (DEX). This is an independent project utilizing Vega core software, with its own NEB token that will be offered to VEGA holders.

Vega Protocol co-founder Barney Mannerings added:

“While we’re proud of the software we’ve built, the chain and token have not seen the interest and growth that would make them sustainable and allow the project to continue in its current form.We believe the future of the software will be as an open-source protocol for others to build upon. Nebula is poised to do just that, and they are also offering NEB tokens to VEGA token holders, giving them some utility despite being an independent project.”

Validators will keep Vega running until at least October 27 to allow users to withdraw their assets. The team urged to keep a close eye on further updates, as cryptocurrencies under withdrawal may get stuck in the cross-chain protocol at the time of the network shutdown, preventing them from being returned.

The price of the VEGA token has fallen 30% over the past week, from $0,1 to $0,068. The asset has fallen in price by more than 90% since the beginning of the year.

In a White Paper published in 2018, Vega is described as a high-performance blockchain with an application-specific Tendermint Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm. In 2019, the team raised $5 million in a seed round led by Pantera Capital. In 2019, the team raised another 43 million thanks to a token sale on the CoinList platform. The project launched its first on-chain markets after the launch of the alpha mainnet in 2023.

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In July, ZKX, the leading derivatives-focused protocol on StarkNet, announced its closure due to low activity. In August, the developers of the Solana blockchain-based UXD stablecoin proposed to shut down the project for a similar reason.

Also in August, the team of the NFT marketplace Topaz based on the Aptos blockchain announced its closure. At the same time, users were not given any explanations on how to withdraw their assets.