Heco is about to close, what will happen to on-chain assets?

Jessy, Golden Finance

According to the latest announcement from Huobi Exchange, the Heco chain will officially shut down on January 20, 2025. After January 20, deposits and withdrawals on the Heco chain will no longer be processed.

In November 2023, the cross-chain bridge of the Heco chain was hacked, resulting in the loss of virtual currencies worth a total of $8,540. Since then, the Heco chain has been in a state of suspension for a long time.

In 2024, Huobi gradually opened deposits and withdrawals for some mainstream coins on the Heco chain. However, there are certain time limits for the deposits and withdrawals of each coin. The Huobi exchange will periodically halt the deposits and withdrawals of some tokens, and if you miss this time window, there will be no official channel to manage assets.

Currently, only Huobi exchange supports the deposit and withdrawal services for Heco chain, and even on Huobi, only USDT and HT token assets on Heco chain can still be normally deposited.

With the change of ownership of Huobi, the Heco chain has long been in disarray, and it wasn't until the Heco cross-chain bridge was hacked that it truly sounded the death knell for the Heco chain.

And by January 20, 2025, the Heco chain officially came to an end.

Heco and HT, long abandoned by Sun Yuchen

The Heco chain was born in 2020, at which time DeFi was on the rise. Huobi decided to establish its own public chain. During the bull market in 2021, thanks to Huobi being the largest exchange in the world, the Heco chain also developed rapidly, with a significant increase in TVL. Huobi also launched related ecological funds to vigorously support various excellent projects on the Heco chain. At that time, popular ecological projects emerged continuously, attracting numerous users and developers, and it became one of the popular public chains.

According to DeFiLlama data, at its peak, the TVL on the Heco chain reached $2.8 billion in 2021. Currently, the TVL on the Heco chain is only $1.18 million.

In 2022, Li Lin sold Huobi to Sun Yuchen, and in 2023, a series of scandals and problems emerged on the Heco chain, such as the price crash of its oracle iHash Bridge Oracle (HBO), the issuance scandal involving its insurance project Book Finance (BOOK), the falsification of the audit report for the TokenLink oracle project, and the exit scam of Gainswap. These incidents severely damaged the reputation and ecosystem of the HECO chain. By the end of 2023, a theft incident occurred at the HECO chain's cross-chain bridge, leading to a prolonged halt. In 2024, the liquidity crisis of the coins on its chain became prominent, with insufficient trading depth, making it difficult for investors to liquidate their assets.

Although in 2024, Huobi briefly offered deposit and withdrawal services for some mainstream tokens on the Heco chain, the duration was short, and many users missed out. The current owner of Huobi, Sun Yuchen, has completely abandoned the Heco chain, and its original platform token HT has also been discarded. The new platform token HTX was launched at the beginning of 2024, and HT users can choose to exchange HT for HTX.

Currently, the price of HT has already dropped by over 90% from the price during the last bull market. For users, continuing to hold assets on the Heco chain is certainly not a wise choice.

All Heco chain assets other than HT and USDT have been rendered obsolete

Currently, if there is still deposited HT on the Heco chain, it can be directly withdrawn to the Huobi exchange. Although the exchange does not provide trading pairs for HT, users can exchange HT for HTX, with a conversion rate currently at 0.64.

Alternatively, after transferring HT to Huobi exchange, you can trade on exchanges like Gate that also have HT trading pairs through the ETH chain. As of the time of writing, the price of HT on Gate exchange is around 1.3U.

USDT on the Heco chain can currently still be withdrawn to the Huobi exchange, but if users have other deposited assets, it seems there is no way to do so.

Currently, in various communities, members frequently post messages related to "recycling Heco chain assets." A reporter from Golden Finance randomly contacted a member who posted such messages.

He told the Golden Finance reporter that he was buying back HT at a price of 1U each, and other assets on the Heco chain were also being bought back, but at prices far below the market price. For example, since Huobi no longer accepts Mana assets on the Heco chain, he can only buy back the token at about one-tenth of its price.

Currently, the HT token has no fundamentals to speak of and serves no purpose, yet it still has a market value of 200 million dollars.

A reporter asked this group friend who is in the on-chain asset recovery business why he wanted to recover these tokens. His response was that some people have faith in these coins.

However, no profit means no early start. For a businessman, there is likely more profit to be made here. If he recovers HT at 1U, even if he sells it on exchanges like Gate at the current price of 1.3U each, he can earn about 30% profit.

The reporter did not attempt to trade with him, so it's impossible to determine whether this is a scam. There is a possibility of a fraud where coins are sent to him but he does not send the money in return, so readers are advised to discern for themselves.

For users, a relatively reliable way to manage assets on the Heco chain is through the Huobi official website. If there are still accumulated USDT and HT on the Heco chain, they can be withdrawn to the exchange for further processing. However, there are currently no official processing channels for other assets, and seeking third-party services carries a higher risk of being scammed.