The closure of Heco is imminent, what to do with on-chain assets?

Jessy, Gold 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 currency worth a total of $8,540. Since then, the Heco chain has been in a prolonged state of suspension.

In 2024, Huobi gradually opened the deposit and withdrawal for some mainstream coins on the Heco chain. However, there are certain time restrictions for the deposit and withdrawal of each corresponding coin. Huobi exchange will periodically stop the deposit and withdrawal of certain tokens, and if you miss this time window, there will be no official channels to manage your assets.

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

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

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, relying on Huobi, the world's largest exchange, the Heco chain also developed rapidly, with a significant increase in TVL. Huobi also launched related ecological funds to support various excellent projects on the Heco chain. During that time, popular ecological projects emerged continuously, attracting numerous users and developers, and it once became one of the popular public chains.

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

In 2022, Li Lin sold Huobi to Sun Yuchen. In 2023, the Heco chain also experienced a series of scandals and issues, such as the price crash of the oracle iHash Bridge Oracle (HBO) on its platform, the inflation scandal of the insurance project Book Finance (BOOK), the falsification of the audit report of the TokenLink oracle project, and the exit scam incident of Gainswap. These events seriously damaged the reputation and ecosystem of the HECO chain. By the end of 2023, a theft incident occurred at the cross-chain bridge of the HECO chain, leading it into a prolonged suspension. 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 it. 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 more than 90% from its price in the last bull market. For users, continuing to hold assets on the Heco chain is certainly not a wise choice.

Except for HT and USDT, other Heco chain assets have been invalidated

Currently, if there are 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 current exchange rate of 0.64.

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

Currently, USDT on the Heco chain can still be withdrawn to Huobi exchange, but if users have other accumulated assets, there seems to be no way to do anything about it.

Currently, in various communities, it is still common to see group members frequently posting messages related to "recycling Heco chain assets." A reporter from Golden Finance randomly contacted a group member who posted such messages.

He told the Jinse Finance reporter that he is buying back HT at a price of 1U each, while other assets on the Heco chain are also being bought back, but at prices far lower than the market price. For example, since Huobi no longer accepts Mana assets on the Heco chain, he can only buy back that 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 cap of 200 million USD.

A reporter asked a group friend who is engaged in on-chain asset recovery why he wants to recover these tokens, and his response was that some people have faith in these coins.

But no profit comes without early effort; for a businessman, there is likely more to gain here. If he recovers HT for 1U, even if he sells it on exchanges like Gate at the current price of 1.3U each, he could earn about 30% profit.

The reporter did not attempt to trade with him, so it is impossible to determine if this is a scam. There is a possibility of a scam where coins are sent to him but he does not send 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 deposited USDT and HT on the Heco chain, they can be withdrawn to the exchange for further processing. However, there are currently no official channels for other assets, and seeking third-party handling also carries a high risk of being scammed.