MilkyWay Protocol Announces Gradual Shutdown and Permanent Closure According to the official announcement, the liquid staking protocol MilkyWay has announced it will cease operations and permanently close. The main reason lies in the failure of market demand, which its core business relied on, to meet expectations: DeFi activity in the Celestia ecosystem did not experience explosive growth; the re-staking trend faded quickly; tokenization of real-world assets faced unexpected obstacles; and the later pivot to card-based products failed to achieve product-market fit due to insufficient funding and time. As the next step, based on a snapshot taken on January 14 at 10:00 UTC, accumulated protocol fees (in USDC) will be automatically distributed proportionally to eligible MILK holders. Users do not need to claim manually. All liquid staking functions are no longer available as of today, and existing positions will be automatically unstaked. The protocol will eventually cease maintaining all services and destroy the remaining tokens within the protocol. The team has committed to completing the entire shutdown process in a transparent and responsible manner.