Friktion
Its vaults held $150M or more at the 2022 peak; by January 2023, exits only
A Solana protocol of automated options and structured-product vaults, which it called volts, built by the startup Friktion Labs for individuals, DAOs and institutions.
- Capital raised (announced)
Recorded announced backing; this is separate from cash received, customer deposits and money recovered.
- Peak deposits in the vaults
- Estimated
Reports of the peak in April and May 2022 differ: The Block gives $164 million citing DeFiLlama, CoinDesk gives $150 million. Deposits are customer assets held in the vaults, not money raised by the company.
- Deposits at the shutdown
- Estimated
Approximate DefiLlama deposits reported at the January 2023 front-end shutdown; not a loss or refund amount.
Funding
| Round | Date | Announced | Investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| January 2022 round | 2022 |
Announced is what was said at the time. Cash actually received is rarely disclosed and is not assumed to match.
People
| Name | Role | Period | Now | Last checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Uddhav Marwaha | — | Unknown | — | |
| Alex Wlezien | — | Unknown | — |
Timeline
14 January 2022
Friktion said its lending and yield vaults held over $100 million and planned Circuits, a portfolio-management system for member-run organizations.
November 2022
25 January 2023
How it ended
Friktion moved every volt into withdrawal-only mode from 25 January 2023, stopped taking deposits and urged users to withdraw, while its contracts stayed usable on-chain. The company said costs had outpaced revenue, citing the Terra and FTX collapses and Solana network outages; its chief executive and chief technology officer called it a joint decision driven by the project's economics.
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Sources
6 sources behind this page.
- 1DeFi Project Friktion's Shutdown Said to Stem Partly From Founder Disagreement · CoinDesk · Jan 2023
- 2Solana DeFi project Friktion shuts down its user platform · Cointelegraph · Jan 2023
- 3Solana DeFi protocol Friktion sunsets front end app · crypto.news · Jan 2023
- 4Solana-based Friktion urges users to withdraw funds as it halts front-end operations · CryptoSlate · Jan 2023
- 5Friktion Raises $5.5m to Bring Full-Stack Portfolio Management to DeFi on Solana · Newsfile (paid press release issued for Friktion) · Jan 2022
- 6Solana-based DeFi project Friktion shuts down its front end · The Block · Jan 2023
Every figure above is clickable and opens the sources behind it. Copies were stored when each source was read, so a citation still resolves after the page it came from is gone.