Acala and Karura propose shutting down in February 2027

In a community letter, the team said both networks had been in maintenance mode, with no significant protocol upgrades or growth. It proposed keeping collators, RPC nodes, coretime, withdrawals and cross-chain routes operating during the wind-down. Acala referendum #195 and Karura referendum #137 must pass for the plan to proceed.

The team said Polkadot’s multichain structure dispersed liquidity, users and attention across parachains, while wallet infrastructure did not make transfers between them seamless. “Instead of one deep market, the ecosystem ended up with many shallow ones,” the letter said. DefiLlama dashboards dated Nov. 9 showed $257,223 in DeFi total value locked on Acala and $44,200 on Karura. Those figures are not a full tally of assets users may need to withdraw.

Users would have to remove DOT, KSM and bridged assets, including USDT and USDC, by Feb. 10, 2027. Liquid-staking positions have earlier cutoffs to allow for unbonding: ordinary LDOT by Jan. 12, 2027; LDOT locked to a validator by Dec. 16, 2026; and LKSM by Feb. 2, 2027. Borrowers with aUSD or aSEED loans must repay them and release collateral before transferring assets. Liquidity providers must withdraw their liquidity, and lcDOT holders are directed to use the Acala or Euphrates app.

Native ACA and KAR tokens are excluded from the external-asset return process and would remain on their chains. The team said it would make a best-effort attempt to return other assets left behind to the same owners’ accounts on Polkadot or Kusama Asset Hub, but warned recovery is not guaranteed. External treasury assets would be donated to the Polkadot and Kusama treasuries, respectively; native treasury tokens would stay on their networks.

The letter also revisited Acala’s August 2022 aUSD minting incident, which followed a configuration error in the newly launched iBTC/aUSD pool. The team said almost all mistakenly minted aUSD was recovered and burned, and the foundation used its own funds to cover a shortfall tied to assets that had left Acala. It said aUSD later became fully collateralized again but did not fully regain users’ trust. Replies to the shutdown announcement raised concerns about crowdloan losses, unresolved stablecoin holdings and treasury donations. The team warned users that it would not send direct messages or request seed phrases, private keys or funds.