Binance Removes Trading Pairs for Solana-based Exchange Serum Token

Binance has made the decision to remove various trading pairs for Serum's SRM token, including those against the Binance exchange token (BNB), Bitcoin (BTC), and Tether’s stablecoin (USDT).

Serum serves as the governance token for the decentralized Solana-based exchange that was also backed by FTX and Alameda Research in August 2020.

Project Serum has been dogged by uncertainty since FTX’s massive collapse; though it was marketed as decentralized, some high-profile developers speculated someone at FTX would have potentially held keys to the exchange, including co-founder of crypto exchange Mango Markets Max Schneider.

Solana founder Anatoly Yakovenko said on Twitter that “the devs that depend on Serum are forking the program because the upgrade key to the current one is compromised.”

These concerns led to many DeFi apps and developers cutting off access to the Serum project, including NFT marketplace Magic Eden, after the disappearance of $400 million in funds from FTX. 

Some have attributed the disappearance to an insider hack amid ongoing speculation, casting doubt on the future of the safety of the Serum platform. The Bahamas authorities also claimed responsibility for the movement of at least some of the funds. 

"[There is] credible evidence that the Bahamian government is responsible for directing unauthorized access to the Debtors' systems for the purpose of obtaining digital assets of the Debtors,” wrote the newly-appointed CEO responsible for FTX’s bankruptcy proceedings John Ray. 

Serum project spirals

Elsewhere, Jupiter, another Solana-based DEX aggregator exchange, informed users it was halting the use of Serum's liquidity “due to security concerns about upgrade authorities” and that it encouraged all its integrators “to do the same.”

The move then led to many of Serum’s key developers turning their attention to OpenBook, a community-led “hard fork” of the Serum program.

This type of uncertainty seems to have led to rampant speculation on SRM token prices.

On November 15, the prices of SRM tokens soared after the new “hard fork” was confirmed, moving from $0.18758 to $0.300908 in just 24 hours, as per CoinGecko data.

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Regardless of any efforts to save the project, the value of SRM tokens has since been decimated in the past year, falling 97.9% from their all-time high in September 2021 to just $0.282431 as of writing. 

Decrypt has contacted Binance for an explanation regarding the news.

This isn’t the first time that we’ve seen Binance crackdown on the trading of Solana tokens in the past month. 

Earlier this month, it announced that it temporarily suspended deposits of the stablecoins USDC and USDT on the Solana blockchain “until further notice,” though it would later resume deposits of USDC (SOL).