Orderly Network delists five chains to sharpen liquidity and security focus

Orderly Network is pulling the plug on five blockchain integrations that were, to put it charitably, gathering dust. The permissioned liquidity layer for perpetual futures DEXes will delist Story, Plume, Monad, Abstract, and Morph on May 25, following a governance vote that closed on May 11.

The numbers tell the story better than any announcement could. Story had just $186K in TVL. Plume sat at $24K. Monad managed $14K, Abstract held $9K, and Morph barely registered at $975. Zero active builders across all five chains over the prior three months.

How the governance vote worked

Orderly didn’t make this call unilaterally. The process started with a governance proposal on May 4, giving $ORDER token holders a direct say in which chains stay and which ones go.

The mechanism was straightforward: any chain that failed to secure at least 10% of total voting power would face delisting. The default outcome of the vote favored removal, meaning chains needed active advocacy from the community to survive. None of the five cleared that bar.

One important detail for users on the affected chains: fund withdrawal remains fully accessible. Orderly has confirmed that users can pull their assets from both deprecated and active chains without interruption.

Why this matters for liquidity

Orderly currently operates across more than 18 chains with over 350 active builders in its ecosystem. Trimming five zero-builder chains doesn’t shrink the network in any meaningful way.

The retained chains with the strongest performance metrics include Arbitrum, Base, and Optimism. These networks have demonstrated meaningfully higher trading volumes and builder activity compared to the delisting candidates.

The security angle is equally relevant. Every chain integration is a potential attack surface. Maintaining bridge connections and smart contract deployments on chains with $975 in TVL creates risk that dramatically outweighs any benefit.

Broader context: Orderly’s recent moves

This delisting doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Orderly launched permissionless perpetual futures listings on April 9, a feature designed to lower the barriers for creating new trading markets on the platform. That move signaled an expansion of what can be traded. The chain delisting signals a contraction of where it can be traded.

Orderly has also left the door open for reinstatement. If any of the five delisted chains eventually develops meaningful trading activity and builder engagement, they can be re-integrated.

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