Echo Protocol Winds Down, Halting New Deposits and Borrowing

Echo Protocol, a Bitcoin liquidity and yield protocol, said Oct. 19 it is winding down, with new lending deposits, borrowing, strategy deposits and staking already halted.

Repayments, withdrawals and necessary liquidations remain available, the team said, while lending interest accrual has stopped.

DefiLlama's latest API snapshots on Oct. 19 showed $10.71 million in total value locked across Echo, mostly on B² Network and Bitcoin. It separately tracked about $257,000 in outstanding borrowing. The affected Aptos products had much smaller balances: about $2,500 in Echo Lending, $13,700 in Echo Liquid Staking and zero TVL in Echo Strategy. TVL excludes active loans.

Borrowers face a contradictory repayment schedule. The notice says all loans must be repaid by Nov. 14, 2026, and operations will cease after that date. But its timeline lists Nov. 19, 2026, at 6:59 p.m. ET as the final deadline for repayments, withdrawals and unstaking.

Echo said unpaid loans could lead to collateral liquidation, with proceeds applied to outstanding obligations to lenders. It has not set a final completion date for liquidation and distribution.

Exits and Redemptions

Echo outlined different exit steps for each product:

- **Lending:** Repay outstanding debt, release collateral and withdraw available assets. - **Strategy:** “initiate exits as soon as possible” and complete claims when eligible. - **Liquid staking, labeled LSD in the notice:** Continue using the existing unstake-and-claim process.

Claim availability for LSD and Strategy depends on the timing of each staking or unstaking request, Echo said.

The team warned users to ignore requests to transfer funds or sign privately for a wallet address, and directed support questions to its official Discord.

Echo said the Aptos-to-B² Bridge will remain available for aBTC redemptions after operations cease. The notice gives no end date for that service.