Solana-Based Serum Addresses Its Uncertain Future as Volume Drops to ‘Near-Zero’

Serum, a decentralized exchange built on Solana, said that its mainnet program has become defunct after the collapse of FTX and Alameda Research.

In a Twitter update on Tuesday, the project said that its security is in jeopardy given the fact that its upgrade authority is held by FTX. The upgrade authority refers to an account responsible for signing transactions which also has the ability to alter on-chain code.

Serum directed users to an ongoing community-wide effort to fork Serum, led by a developer called Mango Max, referring to the new project as “hope.” 

The Serum fork was initiated earlier this month after users suspected the upgrade authority may have been compromised in the FTX hack. At the time, Mango Max and a team of developers quickly deployed a verified build of Serum v3. The upgrade authority is now managed by a multi-sig wallet controlled by a trusted group.

The two-week-old Serum fork now has a name – OpenBook. According to Serum, the project is live on the Solana mainnet with over $1 million in daily volume.

“Unfortunately, with Openbook’s existence Serum’s volume and liquidity has dropped to near-zero. Users and protocols are safe using an alternative fork such as Openbook, after finding out security risks on the old Serum code,” stated Serum.

As for Serum’s native token SRM, the project believes that the future is uncertain. According to the DEX, the governance forum features a number of conflicting proposals regarding the treatment of the token. Some proposals suggest using SRM for discounts, while others have called for not using it at all in light of FTX and Alameda’s exposure to it.