The hack targeting the Step Finance wallet in January also affected three Solana platforms, amid a 52% drop in total value locked across the chain from its peak.
Step Finance, a DeFi aggregation platform and portfolio dashboard on Solana , officially announced the immediate cessation of all operations following the irrecoverable security breach that occurred on January 31st. The closure also includes two subsidiaries: the Non-Fungible Token analytics platform SolanaFloor and the lending protocol Remora Markets — a painful end for an Capital already under considerable pressure since the beginning of the year.
According to chain security firm CertiK, 261,854 SOL — equivalent to approximately $27 million at the time of the incident — were Staking and moved out of the project's treasury wallets. The operations team stated that they had XEM all options, including bridge Capital and seeking a buyer, but “could not guarantee a viable outcome.”
Investor Mike Dudas revealed that he had been approached by Step Finance regarding an emergency Capital round, but requested a post-audit security analysis report before XEM it and received no response. Co-founder George Harrap acknowledged the project is under "time pressure" even though several parties have approached to acquire individual business segments.
Token step collapses, Solana DeFi loses more than half its value from its peak.
The financial consequences reflect the severity of the incident. The STEP Token plummeted 96% immediately after the attack, and continued to fall by a further 36% after the shutdown announcement, currently trading at $0.00057 — a near-absolute distance from its all-time high of $10.20 recorded in August 2021.
For holders of Remora's STEP and rToken Token , the company said it would implement a buyback plan based on snapshots taken before the incident — a minimum measure given that the assets had lost almost all of their value.
This event is taking place during a challenging period for the entire Solana DeFi ecosystem. According to defillama, the total value of assets locked on the chain is now only $6.3 billion, down 52% from its peak in September 2024. The price of SOL also reflects this trend, currently trading around $78 — 74% lower than its peak of $293 recorded in January 2025, the height of the on- chain memecoin wave.
The collapse of Step Finance once again raises questions about the security capabilities of wallets in DeFi projects, especially when a single vulnerability can be enough to wipe out an entire ecosystem built over many years.
