Announcing the Closure of Kollider: A Farewell and A New Beginning
Dear Kollider Community,
It is with a heavy heart that we announce the shutting down of Kollider, the first real-time settled derivatives exchange leveraging the Bitcoin Lightning Network. This decision is effective as of today, and we will be taking steps to wind down all Kollider's operations over the next month.
The Journey We Embarked On
Kollider was born out of a vision three years ago—a vision to revolutionize the world of derivatives trading. We aimed to minimize counterparty risks and maximize capital efficiency, all while providing instantaneous settlements. We built a framework around the most secure, decentralized, and least volatile cryptocurrency: Bitcoin.
Our understanding of the Bitcoin ecosystem and its users deepened over these years. Our final product, Kollider's synthetic stablecoin wallet, enabled users to hedge volatility against USD and EUR using instantly settled perpetual swaps. This product was especially well-received by those who use Bitcoin as a hedge against inflation as well as a way to access secure and permissionless banking. We believe that this model has tremendous potential and hope that it will eventually become Bitcoin’s first native stable coin.
A Hard Reality
Unfortunately, despite the incredible promise of our platform, we weren't able to build a large enough audience to sustain the business. Operating a derivatives exchange comes with immense complexities and costs, and the niche nature of the Lightning network at its current stage made it challenging for us to scale our operations.
What Comes Next
As of today, we will no longer be accepting any new trades that increase position sizes. We will only accept orders that close out user positions. All users will have until the 30th of November to close their positions and withdraw their Satoshis from the Kollider platform. Any positions that are open past this date will be force closed. The platform will remain open to withdraw until the 31st of December. Similarly for Kollider Wallet. No more deposits are possible and users have until the 31s of December ot move their Sats from their account.
Our Continuing Belief
Even as we make this difficult decision, our faith in the potential of Bitcoin and the Lightning Network remains unshaken. We believe we were ahead of our time and that our product was perhaps too complex for the current state of the ecosystem. While we won't be carrying the torch forward, we genuinely hope that someone else will, when the time is ripe. We continue to believe in the paradigm of order-by-order settlement for both centralized and decentralized exchanges as the future of trading.
A Final Note
The Bitcoin ecosystem is bustling with innovative ideas, and we are excited to see where it goes. Kollider may be closing its doors, but our team will focus on other avenues in the financial economy, always with an eye on the Bitcoin and Lightning Network's development.
We would like to thank each and every one of you who believed in us, supported us, and walked this journey with us. It has been an incredibly rewarding experience, and we're grateful for all the lessons learned.
Thank you, and here’s to new beginnings.
Warm regards, The Kollider Team
If you have any further questions please reach out to us on Twitter or Telegram.