Syndicate Labs Winds Down; SYND Token Hits Record Low

Syndicate Labs, backed by venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, announced on May 21 that it is winding down operations. The company cited a changed market for rollup technology as the reason for the decision.

Market data showed the SYND token dropped to $0.01061 after the announcement and was trading at $0.012 at press time, down about 23% over the previous 24 hours.

Syndicate began by building on-chain developer infrastructure for decentralized autonomous organizations and raised $20 million in a 2021 Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz.

In a May 21 post, the team wrote that the rollup market has ‘‘fundamentally shifted’’ and that ‘‘EVM rollups are no longer the standard,’’ adding that many new rollups launch while several existing ones shut down.

The company said the decision to wind down is not related to last month’s Commons Bridge exploit. Security firm CertiK reported the attacker obtained about 18.5 million SYND tokens and sold them for roughly $330,000 before moving funds to Ethereum. Syndicate reimbursed affected holders from treasury funds set aside for incident response.

Syndicate’s operations are divided between two legal entities. Syndicate Labs handled development work. The Syndicate Network Collective, organized as a Wyoming Decentralized Unincorporated Nonprofit Association (DUNA), holds SYND tokens and governance authority.

The team said governance is not expected to be affected in the near term. The collective is open to a successor that would preserve the DUNA and has an orderly wind-down plan if no steward emerges. Team members and investors remain subject to existing lockups and vesting schedules, and no affiliated individual accessed allocations early.

Syndicate confirmed its codebase will remain open source and available to contributors regardless of the future of the company or the collective. The team added that whether a credible successor appears in the coming weeks will likely determine SYND’s long-term status.