Linear Finance, a decentralized cross-chain trading protocol, announced today, March 27, 2025, that it will cease operations after years of financial struggles.
According to details the DeFi protocol shared in a statement, the decision follows years of struggle in terms of revenue generation.
Linear Finance is also closing shop after receiving a significant blow when Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, delisted its native token, LINA.
The protocol’s notice of closure stated:
Despite our ongoing efforts to innovate and build throughout the years, the project has struggled to generate sustainable returns. Outside of a brief period of profitability during our initial launch in 2019/20, Linear Finance has faced increasing financial challenges,”
The closure marks the end of a project that aimed to innovate synthetic asset trading but ultimately could not overcome mounting economic challenges.
As noted, Linear launched in 2019 and only experienced brief profitability at the start of its operations.
However, financial headwinds have since crumbled the business, with Linear relying largely on its founder and LINA token liquidations for funding.
Efforts such as the launch of the LINA marketplace and a multi-chain perps DEX failed to pick up momentum.
Binance’s delisting of LINA
Per the announcement, the tipping point for the project came earlier this month.
Binance, a major cryptocurrency exchange, announced that it would delist LINA, with this taking effect on March 28, 2025.
This move triggered a sharp 65% drop in the token’s market capitalization, and effectively collapsed the protocol’s operational runway.
Notably, Binance, which recently introduced a vote to list and vote to delist mechanism, also removed AERGO, AST, BURGER, and COMBO tokens.
Linear Finance noted that in the case of delisting LINA and the other tokens, there had been “no vote, no warning, and zero transparency.”
Today, @binance delisted $AERGO, $AST, $BURGER, $COMBO, and $LINA — then moments later posted:
“Binance values community input and recognizes that it is a key driving force in the course of our development. We recently introduced two community co-governance listing mechanisms,
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The Linear Finance team says this has left the project with little room to recover, hence the collective stakeholder decision to wind down operations.
“Our Operations Team will be in touch shortly with clear timelines and step-by-step instructions for users with active positions across our dApps,” the statement continued.
LINA token price
The price of the LINA token has experienced a significant downside since Binance’s announcement and was down 5% in the past 24 hours.
As the market reacts to the latest developments, the token’s 24-hour trading volume has spiked 30% to over $46m.
This notable figure suggests an increase in market activity, likely to intensify as the price now hits -99%.
The cessation of Linear Finance operations comes as DEX protocol Hyperliquid (HYPE) experiences another significant incident.
On March 26, the Hyperliquid team was forced to delist a newly listed token, JELLY, after a seemingly coordinated trade designed to wipe out the protocol’s liquidity pool.
Reactions have seen many questions about the project’s decentralization.
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