Layer 1 blockchain Dango will cease operations, halting trading on its perpetual decentralized exchange (DEX) on Wednesday and shutting down its network on August 13.
“Despite our best efforts, for various reasons we have concluded that there is no viable path to sustained commercial success” – Dango he said in the announcement from Friday
Dango founder, Larry Liu in addition that the team faced cash shortages, legal challenges that slowed momentum, the loss of team members and broader market conditions.
Dango fired on its main network in January, after raising $3.6 million in a 2024 seed round led by Hack VC and Lemniscap. This unfolded its perpetual DEX in April, only to suffer losses of approximately $410,000 to employ days after launch. The attacker later refunded the funds in exchange for a bug bounty.
Related: BitMEX filed a lawsuit for 623 BTC on the day the closure was announced
Dango’s open interest dwarfs Hyperliquid, Aster
According to DefiLlama, the total value of Dango is locked cut from a peak of about $4.5 million in early May to about $1.6 million before the announcement.
The perp DEX market is increasingly competitive and dominated by a few platforms.
As of Saturday, Hyperliquid had more than $11 billion in open interest, representing the value of outstanding futures contracts that have not been closed.
Perp DEX Ranking by Open Interests. Source: DefiLlama
Only Aster and Variational have open-ended funds worth more than $1 billion. Dango had almost $391,000 in open wallets.
CoinGecko stated in its second quarter industry report that on July 1, Hyperliquid became the second largest perpetual exchange thanks to open interest, behind Binance.
Summer of downtime in cryptocurrencies
Dango’s shutdown adds to a growing list of cryptocurrency platform shutdowns in July, including 11-year-old perpetual futures pioneer BitMEX.
Restructuring advisor Roshan Dharia told Cointelegraph that BitMEX’s closure reflects the structural pressures facing mid-market centralized exchanges, where liquidity is increasingly concentrated among the industry’s largest players and compliance costs continue to rise.
“The top five platforms now control an estimated 80% of global spot volume, leaving mid-tier and regional exchanges with shrinking margins and no viable path to scale,” Dharia said.
Other recent closures include DEX aggregator Odos Protocol and DEX perpetrator Satori Finance.
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