The Base-native DeFi lender Seamless Protocol said the decision was made after careful consideration of the protocol’s trajectory and market conditions.
Seamless Protocol, a DeFi lending protocol, is winding down after more than 2.5 years on Coinbase’s Base network, saying its leverage-token model never found a clean path to scale.
In a post on X on Tuesday, April 7, the team said the Seamless web app will go offline on June 30, and told users to withdraw their tokens before then. The team warned that once the interface is gone, recovering assets will require “manual contract interaction.”
Seamless also said its Morpho vaults will be wound down, with curator Gauntlet pulling funds from the markets and bringing APY to 0%. Staked SEAM, also known as stkSEAM, will be shut down as the yield source behind staking rewards is being turned off.
Founded in 2023, Seamless pitched itself as the first decentralized native lending and borrowing protocol on Base. To support the project, Coinbase listed SEAM, the protocol’s native token, in December 2023.
Amid the closure news, SEAM price dropped 6% to $0.084, with market cap declining to around $3.7 million, per CoinGecko.
Seamless Protocol Blames Volatile Market Conditions
The protocol was built without venture capital, relying instead on community support. The team noted there were “no investors and no external funding rounds” as it was community-governed from the beginning.
As Seamless explained, the decision to wind down services wasn’t due to the code itself, but the market around it. It said leverage tokens ran into thin liquidity, sharp rate swings and a small pool of yield sources.
Before the shutdown, Seamless had tried to widen its reach. In April 2024, it launched an altcoin lending market on Base for DEGEN and SEAM, letting holders borrow stablecoins or Ethereum (ETH▲$1,670.36) while keeping their token exposure.
