Today, we are announcing the orderly wind-down of the Interlay and Kintsugi networks.
If you hold assets on Interlay or Kintsugi, withdraw your external assets before 22 July 2026.
After 22 July 2026, the chains stop producing blocks, and all remaining funds are locked on the chain. The shutdown will be completed so that the community can restart the network should it wish to do so, following comprehensive instructions we will provide.
This began as an academic problem. Alexei and Dom met during their PhDs, working on research into trustless cross-chain bridges that would ultimately become XCLAIM. In 2019, the Web3 Foundation approached them to turn that research into something real: a Bitcoin bridge for Polkadot. We have been building on that idea ever since.
The bridge started life as PolkaBTC, conceived as a public good for the ecosystem, a trustless way to bring Bitcoin to Polkadot, owned by no one and available to all. When it became clear that the Kusama DAO would not support public-good status, we turned the work into a project in its own right. Interlay was born as the main network and Kintsugi as its canary version. On both Kusama and Polkadot, we competed in the earliest parachain auctions and brought Interlay and Kintsugi live in the second batches of parachains ever to launch on the networks.
From a research paper to two live networks securing real Bitcoin, it has been a long road, and one we are proud of.
We set out to do something much of the industry said could not be done trustlessly: bring Bitcoin into DeFi without a custodian, without an IOU you had to trust, and without a single point of failure.
interBTC was, to our knowledge, the first genuinely trustless and decentralized Bitcoin bridge ever built. Based on the XCLAIM framework, it let anyone mint iBTC on Interlay and kBTC on Kintsugi, backed 1:1 by real Bitcoin and secured by a permissionless network of over-collateralized vaults rather than by centralized operators holding your keys. Around it we built a full Bitcoin DeFi hub, with an AMM and a money market, and the plumbing to move BTC across the multi-chain world. We are proud of the engineering, and the code has been open source from day one.
We always tried to invest beyond our own four walls:
We will be straight with you. Interlay and Kintsugi have been in maintenance mode for some time. We have not shipped meaningful protocol updates in roughly two years, and the networks have been quietly running rather than growing. Bitcoin DeFi in the Polkadot ecosystem did not reach the scale it needed to sustain active development, and our energy has moved to where that same vision is now finding traction.
Keeping two networks running indefinitely with no active development serves no one. The honest and responsible step is to formally wind them down now, in the open, while the bridge still works and while everyone can still withdraw their funds.
We are leaving with our heads held high. We gave this our best for years, far beyond what Interlay alone ever required of us. We have nothing to hide, and we believe this is simply the right thing to do.
Interlay and Kintsugi are not being switched off and deleted. Every line of code is open source, governance has always lived on-chain in the hands of the community, and we are publishing everything needed to restart the networks: full chain snapshots, the collator keys, and a step-by-step revival runbook. If the community wishes to carry these chains forward, the door is open.
We still believe Bitcoin should be the foundation of an open financial system, not an asset sitting on the sidelines. That is exactly what we are now building with BOB, where Bitcoin DeFi is finding the audience and the traction we always wanted for it. The Interlay chapter is closing. The mission stays.
To everyone who minted an iBTC, ran a vault, wrote a proposal, filed a bug, or simply believed in trustless Bitcoin finance when it was an unfashionable thing to believe in: thank you. You took a bet on a hard idea and a small team, and you stayed. We are proud of what we built together, and we hope you will come and see what we are building next.
To our community, our vault operators, our partners across the ecosystem, and everyone who contributed: thank you. It has been a genuine privilege.
– The Interlay team
Can I withdraw my INTR or KINT?
No. INTR and KINT are the native tokens of the chains and cannot be withdrawn, unstaked-and-moved-off, bridged, or transferred to another network. This includes any staked or vote-locked (escrow) balances. They remain on their respective chain.
Which assets can I withdraw, then?
Everything that is not native: your Bitcoin held as iBTC and kBTC, and any assets bridged in from other chains (for example DOT, USDT, USDC, KSM, vDOT, LKSM). Withdraw all of these before the deadline.
I hold iBTC or kBTC. How do I get my Bitcoin back?
Redeem them for BTC in the app, where vaults stay online until the deadline to fulfil redemptions. Note that a large portion of iBTC and kBTC has already been liquidated. Those amounts cannot be redeemed for BTC and must instead be burned for the underlying collateral (for example DOT or KSM) in the app. The app will guide you to whichever path applies to your holdings.
What is the deadline?
22 July 2026.
What if I miss the deadline?
Once coretime expires, the chains stop producing blocks and all remaining funds are locked on the chain. They could only be accessed again if the community restarts the network using the published runbook. For external assets bridged from other chains (such as DOT, KSM, or vDOT), the governance of those other chains can also decide to unlock the corresponding assets on their side of the XCM channel.
What happens to my INTR or KINT after the shutdown?
They stay on the chain. INTR and KINT are already delisted from exchanges, so there is no route to sell or move them off-chain. They remain on their network and, if the community revives it, keep their on-chain and governance role.
Will the app and bridge stay online until then?
Yes. The app, the bridge, the vaults, the price feeds, and the cross-chain channels all stay live until the deadline.
What about the Interlay and Kintsugi DAO assets?
Any external assets held by the Interlay and Kintsugi DAO will remain on the chain and can be used by the community to fund the network in the future, should this be the desired outcome.