Dominion, an on-chain silver project, has announced it is shutting down.

The silver is still there. The keys are gone.

1️⃣ What happened

On September 11, attackers obtained 3 of the 5 keys to Dominion’s multisig and dumped about 46,909 $SILV into DEX pools with very little liquidity. The tokens had a nominal value of about $3 million before the attack, but ultimately fetched only around $238,000.

2️⃣ Why shut down

In an announcement on October 7, the team said that liquidity had collapsed after the hack and operating funds had been lost. The money needed to rebuild the market exceeded the project’s remaining resources.

3️⃣ What happens to long-time holders

Most of the remaining liquid funds went toward refunds: SILV held before the attack and left untouched could be exchanged for $USDC at $63 per token (the team said this was $2 above spot silver prices on the day claims opened). The claim window was 7 days and closed on October 5. SILV bought during the attack window was removed and refunded separately in USDC.

4️⃣ Background

SILV launched on August 13, with each token designed to represent one troy ounce of physical silver. According to SolanaFloor, the team said it held 150,000 ounces of silver, audited by Bureau Veritas in June this year. Less than a month passed between launch and the incident, and less than two months between launch and the shutdown announcement.

My take:

The question most often asked about RWAs is, “Are the underlying assets real?” Dominion shows that an asset audit alone isn’t enough: an issuer’s multisig, key management, and secondary-market liquidity are just as critical to these products. Lose 3 of your 5 keys, and even a full silver vault can’t save the market.

The good: the team didn’t run off with the money and refunded the remaining funds to existing holders at a price close to spot.

The bad: liquidity for small-cap tokenized commodities can be paper-thin the moment something goes wrong.

The team’s final words were, “Silver belongs onchain. We still believe that.” The vision is sound; they just couldn’t carry it through this time.

When evaluating RWA projects, in addition to checking the audit report, ask three more questions: How many multisig keys are there? Who holds them? How deep is the pool?

Sources: Dominion’s official X (@Dominion_Market) announcement; reports from TokenPost, SolanaFloor, and Odaily.

This is not investment advice.