flopipop

On July 15th, Ostium was attacked and roughly $23.75M was taken from the vault. OLP holders bore that loss, and for the two months that followed, you heard far too little from us. That was a mistake, and I take responsibility for the silence. We started Ostium four and a half years ago, right out of college, because we believed Real World Asset perpetuals would be the next killer product to come out of crypto after stablecoins. I believe that as much today as I did then. We pioneered the category. Before the attack we had the second-highest open interest among RWA perp venues and a strong base of core traders. But we were also spread across too many competing priorities, and had begun working to refocus the protocol. The attack forced a decision. We could try to restart everything we'd been doing as quickly as possible, or we could use the moment to build a more focused company. We chose the second. That took longer than it should have to communicate, because recovery, resource allocation, and the future of the business all depended on the same question: what company are we building from here? In trying to have every answer before we spoke, we left you without the information you needed at the moment you needed it most. That made a hard situation worse. I know there's been a lot of speculation about what we were doing. We went quiet, but we didn’t go anywhere. Since July, the team has been developing the next iteration of our trading stack from the ground up, rebuilding our operational and legal footing, and working through significant setbacks, all while sharpening Ostium into a more focused company. I know this plan isn't what many of you hoped for, especially those with larger losses. Meaningful recovery can only come from Ostium's growth, and Stage 2 will give affected holders a stake in it. Thank you to our team, and to everyone who waited for answers you deserved sooner. Our core leadership and senior engineering team remains intact and more committed than ever. Going forward, we will build in the open. We’ll share technical details early on, and will be more incremental than polished. We won't wait until every answer is in hand. We took a hard hit, but we're very much still here. Tomorrow, we'll share what we've been building since July and where Ostium goes next.