zkLend Throws in the Towel: Starknet's Lending Protocol Shuts Down After $10M Hack

Hold onto your hats, folks! zkLend, the daring decentralized money lending protocol on Starknet, has just announced they're pulling the plug on their operations. Boom! Just like that, they're out!

This layer 2 money market lending protocol, built on the Starknet (STRK) network, dropped the bombshell on June 25. And guess what? It's only been a few months since they got rocked by a nearly $10 million hack. Ouch!

What happened?

Listen up, zkLend got slammed hard, losing over $9.5 million in a vicious exploit on February 12, 2025. According to their latest update, they just couldn't bounce back from that attack. And if that wasn't bad enough, the delisting of ZEND made things even worse.

The Starknet-based L2 spilled the beans on X, and let me tell you, those two factors are the heart of why they're calling it quits.

“This decision was not made lightly,” zkLend said. “Over recent months, the exploit we suffered has deeply eroded user confidence, and furthermore, the recent removal of ZEND from major exchanges like Bybit and KuCoin has further constrained token liquidity and accessibility.”

With these hurdles, zkLend found it tough to “effectively allocate toward any new initiatives.”

So what's next? The protocol is now all about user restitution. They've got $200,000 left in the treasury, and every penny is going toward recovery efforts for users hit by the hack. zkLend's keeping its DeFi Spring, recovery, and kSTRK portals open for unstaking or claims. They're not giving up on you, folks!

Crypto hacks

Let's talk about the elephant in the room: crypto hacks. zkLend's exploit is just one of many that have rocked the industry in recent months. Security experts are sounding the alarm, noting a huge spike in crypto thefts with major breaches like the $1.4 billion Bybit hack. In 2024 alone, over 160 incidents saw attackers swipe more than $2.3 billion, a whopping 40% more than the $1.69 billion lost to attacks the year before.

These exploits have been devastating for smaller projects, with native tokens crashing to near zero amid market panic. Just look at what happened with the Sui (SUI) token after a more than $220 million hack hit the decentralized exchange protocol Cetus.

And zkLend's security breach didn't do Starknet's native token any favors either. STRK is currently trading around $0.11, down over 28% in the past month and a gut-wrenching 84% over the past year.