Arco Protocol, an ambitious DeFi lending project on the new Aptos mainnet, has gone offline after a fundraiser went south in an unexpected way. Soon after the protocol started its Initial DEX Offering (IDO) sale, concurrent deposits from 300 people led to network congestion. The incident seems to have caused some panic among users.
A smart contract glitch was behind the congestion. Smart contracts play a significant role in the launch of new DeFi projects.
The IDO came to effect on 29 October 2022 at 5.30 pm IST. Soon after, complaints started pouring in. Several users reported not having received the project’s native token, ARC.
The platform intended to offer staking and lending services to users, with Aptos’s infrastructure leading the way. It happens to be one of the few projects to have used Aptos for their mainnet.
What did Acro do to handle the problem?
The Acro team made changes to the smart contract, adding parallel distribution functionality. They even promised to send the ARC tokens manually.
Further, in a Twitter thread from 30 October, Acro apologized to its users. The team has, however, also made known their disappointment on the media labeling them scammers.
The company behind the protocol even opened a Twitter poll with three options, in response. Users were asked to vote on Refund, Trust, and 100% Community Handling as part of the poll. “We don’t trust, Refund” received the most (49.60%) votes.
Acro: What’s the latest update?
Several Acro partners ended their relationship with the DeFi lending project. These included the likes of Celer Network and Wormhole.
At present, both the Acro Discord channel and the website are offline.
However, it isn’t just the Acro Protocol that has been receiving flak. Even the parent Aptos blockchain has been at the receiving end of user criticism owing to centralized tokenomics. On 29 October 2022, D3Gens, an Aptos fan community, even sounded a potential rug pull alarm in relation to an ambitious NFT project, AptosChimp.
