Radiant Capital is an omnichain DeFi lending protocol powered by LayerZero cross-chain messaging that launched July 2022 on Arbitrum — enabling users to deposit collateral on one blockchain and borrow on another in a single transaction — with RDNT as its emissions-heavy incentive token rewarding depositors and borrowers, reaching $1B+ TVL in early 2023 and becoming one of Arbitrum’s largest DeFi protocols, before suffering a catastrophic October 2024 security breach in which attackers compromised the private keys of three of Radiant’s multisig signers through a sophisticated malware and social engineering attack, draining approximately $50 million of user funds.
| Stat | Value |
|---|---|
| Ticker | RDNT |
| Price | $0.00 |
| Market Cap | $2.69M |
| 24h Change | +1.7% |
| Circulating Supply | 1.29B RDNT |
| Max Supply | 1.50B RDNT |
| All-Time High | $0.59 |
| Contract (Arbitrum One) | 0x3082...aaa0 |
| Contract (Base) | 0xd722...c5d4 |
| Contract (Ethereum) | 0x137d...f893 |
| Contract (Binance Smart Chain) | 0xf7de...84df |
How It Works
- Omnichain deposits and borrows — Users supply assets (ETH, USDC, WBTC, USDT, BNB, and others) to Radiant’s lending pools on their preferred chain. LayerZero cross-chain messaging allows a user who deposited ETH on Arbitrum to borrow USDC on Ethereum without manually bridging.
- AAVE V2 fork with omnichain layer — Radiant’s core lending mechanics are forked from Aave V2. The innovation is the LayerZero integration connecting multiple chain deployments into a unified omnichain money market.
- RDNT incentives — RDNT tokens are emitted to depositors and borrowers on Radiant pools. Yield farming RDNT emissions drove rapid TVL growth. dLP (dynamic Liquidity Provision) was introduced requiring users to maintain a minimum ratio of RDNT in an LP position to claim RDNT rewards, reducing mercenary farming.
- dLP (dynamic Liquidity Position) — Users must hold a minimum 5% of their Radiant deposit value in RDNT-WETH LP tokens locked for at least 30 days to qualify for RDNT emissions. This mechanic ties protocol usage to RDNT token demand.
- Cross-chain liquidations — Liquidation bots can liquidate underwater positions across chains using Radiant’s omnichain messaging infrastructure.
Tokenomics
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Ticker | RDNT |
| Max supply | 1,000,000,000 (one billion) |
| Distribution | Dynamic emissions to depositors/borrowers; team/investors vesting; DAO treasury |
| dLP requirement | 5% of deposit value in RDNT LP positions to earn RDNT |
| Standard | ERC-20 (Arbitrum native) |
Use Cases
- Cross-chain borrowing — Deposit on Arbitrum, borrow on Ethereum in one transaction.
- High-yield DeFi — Earn RDNT + base lending interest on deposits.
- Omnichain collateral — Use assets across multiple chains as unified collateral base.
History
- 2022-07 — Radiant Capital V1 launches on Arbitrum, immediately attracting deposits with high RDNT emission yields. The LayerZero omnichain money market concept is novel in DeFi and garners significant attention.
- 2023-Q1 — Radiant V2 launches with the dLP (dynamic Liquidity Position) requirement, replacing V1’s uncontrolled RDNT farming. TVL surpasses $1 billion, making Radiant one of Arbitrum’s largest protocols.
- 2023-03 — Radiant expands to BNB Chain. The cross-chain lending model begins running across ARB → ETH → BNB.
- 2023 — RDNT token reaches all-time highs. Radiant is among the largest DeFi borrowing protocols on Arbitrum by TVL. RDNT emission-heavy incentives attract yield farmers and retail depositors.
- 2024-01 — Radiant suffers its first security incident: a $4.5M exploit exploiting a rounding error in its Aave V2-forked code. The vulnerability is patched and Radiant continues operating.
- 2024-10-16 — Radiant Capital suffers a catastrophic security breach. Attackers compromised the hardware wallets of three of Radiant’s multisig signers through sophisticated malware installed via software update delivery (believed to be a North Korea-linked advanced persistent threat group). The compromised signers unknowingly signed malicious transactions that transferred admin control of Radiant’s lending contracts to the attacker. Approximately $50 million is drained from BNB Chain and Arbitrum lending pools. Radiant suspends all markets.
- 2024-Q4 — Radiant works to recover from the hack. The incident is attributed to Lazarus Group (North Korean state-sponsored hackers) by investigators. The $50M loss remains one of the largest cross-chain DeFi hacks of 2024.
Common Misconceptions
“The October 2024 Radiant hack was a smart contract exploit.”
The October 2024 attack was not a smart contract vulnerability. Attackers socially engineered and used malware to compromise the hardware wallets (or signing processes) of multisig signers — a supply-chain/physical-layer attack. The smart contracts themselves functioned as designed; the attackers gained legitimate admin key control.
“RDNT emissions make Radiant’s yields sustainable.”
RDNT emission yields are inflationary incentives that depend on sustained RDNT token price. The dLP requirement improves demand dynamics but does not eliminate dilution risk. Base lending APY (without RDNT emissions) is considerably lower than the advertised “total APY” figures.
Social Media Sentiment
Radiant attracted a large retail following during its high-yield emission phase in 2022–2023. The 2024 hack generated significant negative attention due to its scale and the sophistication of the supply-chain attack vector (hardware wallet compromise via malware, believed to be North Korean Lazarus Group). The incident is extensively discussed as a cautionary example of multisig operational security failures and nation-state threat actor activity in DeFi.
Last updated: 2026-04