Strobe Finance, the only native decentralized lending protocol on the XRP Ledger’s EVM Sidechain, has announced that it is winding down and has given users until July 13 to repay their loans.

The users also have until July 20 to withdraw their deposits before the front end closes permanently.

That shutdown will leave the XRPL EVM Sidechain without a functioning lending market and has raised pointed questions about whether the network can support retail-focused DeFi projects at all.

What Happened, and What Users Need to Know

In a post on X published late Tuesday, the Strobe team bluntly laid out their reason for shutting down. According to them, while the project launched with enough funding to reach mainnet, it had not been able to secure additional support through grants, angel investors, or venture capital. And as total value locked (TVL) fell, the fees the protocol was earning were eventually not enough to cover monthly running costs.

The team also noted that the price of XRP had dipped by about 60% from the level it had been at when Strobe launched, making the funding gap even worse. Furthermore, the XRPL EVM Sidechain, which had been central to Strobe’s original design, is no longer a primary focus within the wider Ripple ecosystem.

“Throughout all of this, our team has contributed hundreds of hours, unpaid, to keep Strobe running,” they wrote. “We have done so gladly, but it is no longer sustainable.”

For those still using the protocol, the timeline is tight, as new deposits and borrowings have been disabled as of the announcement. In addition, anyone with an open loan has been asked to repay it before July 13, when Strobe will start liquidating unpaid positions to protect lenders as liquidity drains out. And since standard liquidation fees will apply, the team pointed out that repaying voluntarily is the better option.

From July 13 to July 20, the app will remain open for withdrawals only, and after the 20th, users will have to interact directly with Strobe smart contracts, which the project said it will publish a step-by-step guide for, although it stressed that using the app before that date would be far simpler.

“To put it plainly: out before 13 July is best; out before 20 July is essential,” it stated.

A Niche That No One Else Filled

There have been some disappointed reactions from several community members, including crypto commentator Shen, who wrote on X that Strobe was “a genuinely unique product within the XRP ecosystem” that had brought decentralized lending to the XRPL mainnet through the EVM Sidechain.

“If innovative products with no local ecosystem competition can’t survive on the XRPL long-term, what kind of projects can?” they asked.

They also called for major changes in how the chain supports retail-focused projects.

Another commentator, Krippenreiter, said they had lent money through the protocol and called its closure “really really bad.”

Ripple itself has been pushing the XRPL in a different direction. Earlier this month, it launched an AI starter kit that positioned XRP and its RLUSD stablecoin as tools for autonomous payment applications and machine-to-machine transactions. That institutional and developer-focused pitch is a long way from the retail lending product that Strobe was trying to build.

Source: CryptoPotato