Yield Protocol shutting down, cites low demand and regulatory challenges

Decentralized finance project Yield Protocol said all borrowing and lending operations would end by Dec. 31, 2023.

Yield Protocol, which raised $10 million backed by Paradigm, Framework Ventures, and other venture capitalists, is the latest defi project to shutdown.

In an X thread on Tuesday, Oct. 3, Yield Protocol said the decision was made due to the lack of “sustainable demand for fixed-rate borrowing” as well as the “increasingly challenging regulatory environment in the U.S., Europe, and the U.K.” The project emphasized it plans to support users until Dec. 31, 2023. After the deadline, the project will offer only limited support for withdrawals.

Founded in 2020, Yield Protocol offered fixed-term and fixed-rate lending services on the decentralized finance market.

In August 2020, Allan Niemerg, founder of Yield Protocol, praised in a blog post the project’s perspective, saying defi “would be greatly improved with fixed-rate, fixed-term borrowing and lending.”

A year later, in June 2021, Yield Protocol raised $10 million in Series A funding round led by Paradigm.

The startup was also backed by Framework Ventures, Symbolic Capital Partners, CMS Holdings, Variant, and the DeFi Alliance.

At the time, Niemerg said the team believes that “fixed-rate borrowing will be essential for DeFi to onboard its first billion users.”

Yield Protocol was among defi protocols that suffered $1.5 million in losses after the non-custodial lending protocol Euler Finance was hacked in March 2023.

However, the protocol full recovered from the incident a few months later, in June 2023.