Kinto
An L2 where every user passed KYC, closed two months after its token was hit
An Ethereum layer-2 network on Arbitrum's technology that required every user to pass identity checks, later repositioned as a non-custodial 'modular exchange' with its own K token.
- Capital raised (announced)
- Estimated
Recorded announced backing; this is separate from cash received, customer deposits and money recovered.
- Identity-verified users
- Estimated
Reported verified users by early 2025; not a count of daily active users at shutdown.
- Drained in the July 2025 exploit
Reported 577 ETH taken from K-token liquidity pools in July 2025. The native asset avoids mixing dollar valuations from different days.
- Expected lender recovery
- Estimated
Recovery-program lender principal expected back in the September 2025 shutdown notice; completed payments not established.
- Founder's personal grant to exploit victims
- Reported figures differ
Funding
| Round | Date | Announced | Investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-seed | 2023 | ||
| 2023 round | 2023 | ||
| K token public sale | 2025 | Not disclosed | |
| Early 2024 round | Unknown | Not disclosed |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ramon Recuero | — | Not established | Oct 2026 |
Timeline
February 2023
May 2023
21 November 2023
Mainnet was then scheduled for the first quarter of 2024.
20 February 2025
A sealed-price auction for 250,000 K tokens, 2.5% of supply, open only to identity-verified users.
31 March 2025
July 2025
An attacker minted 110,000 K tokens and used them to drain liquidity pools on Uniswap and Morpho.
2/ What happened (recap): In July, the industry-wide CPIMP proxy exploit hit our $K token on Arbitrum. Kinto L2, wallets, and core infra were never hacked.
July 2025
Through what the project called its Phoenix programme.
7 September 2025
1/ 🛑 Kinto is shutting down. After exhausting every path to keep going, we’re conducting orderly wind-down to protect users and community. - Users can normally withdraw assets - Phoenix lenders receive ~76% - Morpho Victims can claim up to $1.1k each Read full details 🧵
30 September 2025
A claim contract on Ethereum was to follow in October for remaining balances.
How it ended
Hack or exploit
Kinto announced an orderly wind-down, saying it had exhausted every path to keep going. Earlier that summer a flaw in a widely used upgradeable-contract pattern had let an attacker mint K tokens on Arbitrum and drain the token's liquidity pools; the project said its own chain, wallets and core infrastructure were never breached. Reports said the debt from its recovery effort and weak markets then stalled further fundraising and the team had worked unpaid since the exploit. Remaining assets went first to the recovery lenders, users were told to withdraw from the network, and a claim contract on Ethereum was promised for balances left behind.
Still alive
Open spot
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Sources
16 sources behind this page.
- 1Kinto price slides 85% as project announces shutdown following $1.9M hack in July · crypto.news · Sep 2025
- 2SkyBridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci backs Kinto · crypto.news · Feb 2025
- 3Ethereum Layer-2 Protocol Kinto Launches on Arbitrum Network · Cryptonews · Nov 2023
- 4Kinto to List $K Token on Gate.io, MEXC, and Kinto Exchange (sponsored press release) · Decrypt (press release section) · Mar 2025
- 5Kinto token sale and funding rounds · ICO Drops · user-editable
- 6K Token Sale · Kinto (project documentation)
- 7Kinto Launches as a Layer 2 in Arbitrum Ecosystem (press release) · PR Newswire · Nov 2023
- 8Kinto Raises $5 Million to Launch First KYC'd Layer 2 Blockchain for Financial Institutions and Decentralized Protocols (press release issued by Kinto) · PR Newswire · Nov 2023
- 9Ethereum Layer 2 Kinto migrates to the Arbitrum ecosystem · The Block · Nov 2023
- 10Kinto Token Crashes 91% as Ethereum L2 Project Shuts Down After Hack · The Crypto Times · Sep 2025
Show 6 moreShow fewer
- 11Search of @KintoXYZ posts, 6 to 9 September 2025 · twitterapi.io
- 12Thread beginning with @KintoXYZ's shutdown post of 7 September 2025 · twitterapi.io
- 13X account record for @KintoXYZ · twitterapi.io
- 14Kinto to Shut Down After $1.6 Million July Exploit · Unchained · Sep 2025
- 15Latest posts by @ramonrecuero · X (via twitterapi.io)
- 16X account record for @ramonrecuero · X (via twitterapi.io)
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.