Ardana, a Defi project on the Cardano blockchain ruffled a few features when it blamed the underlying network for “not being ideal” for any protocol development.
The project which touted itself as Cardano’s Defi hub announced halting its operations because of issues related to “funding and project timeline uncertainty.”
The platform which raised $10 million said that the remaining funds and treasury balances will be held by Ardana Labs until another dev team comes forward to continue the work.
The statements invited ire from many, including Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson who likened the “blame game” to Mark Karpeles blaming the Bitcoin protocol for Mt. Gox.
In 2014, Mt. Gox which held over 70% of all bitcoin transactions worldwide, abruptly suspended trading. The then CEO Mark Karpeles and his team issued a press release blaming the Bitcoin protocol itself.
While making the comparison, Hoskinson did not seem to agree with Ardana’s claim of fund inadequacy as it was hardly a year back since the funding round took place.
The investment was led by the now-defunct 3AC and included Cardano’s early-stage investment fund cFund, whose investor was none other than Hoskinson himself.
Just as users were coming to terms with the news, two other Cardano projects Orbis and Indigo met their untimely demise.
Two Other Cardano Projects Down in The Dumps
Orbis, a layer 2 scaling solution notified the Cardano community that it too was ending development citing “constrained funding and uncertain conditions.”
What caught community members’ attention was the project’s last-minute attempt to secure funds through an NFT sale before ceasing operations. Many believed that this was a classic rug pull, while others reiterated that failed projects are not rug pulls.
The next in line of fire was Indigo, a Cardano-based stablecoin project. Unlike the previous two, Indigo did not shut shop but its token launch INDY was marred with malicious activity.
After INDY went live on Nov 22, its price hit ATH 12 from the listing price of 9.5 ADA. The tokens were airdropped to the community members but the intense selling pressure send the price down to 7.7 ADA.
On-chain sleuths found that a single wallet dumped 35k INDY tokens for about $70k leading to the INDY falling back to 5.7.
Upon further investigation, the wallet holder turned out to be a former core team member who had a fallout with Indigo and so dumped the tokens he received early as a gift.