Acala and Karura plan permanent shutdown on February 10, 2027, pending referendums

The Polkadot and Kusama DeFi hubs will close for good if two governance referendums pass, and users have hard deadlines to move their assets Acala is preparing to turn off the lights. The team plans to permanently shut down both the Acala parachain on Polkadot and its sister network Karura on Kusama on February 10, 2027. The decision is not final yet. It depends on two on-chain governance referendums passing, which means token holders get the last word on whether these chains live or die. What the shutdown plan involves Acala Network announced the plan on November 9, 2026. The closure depends on approval of Acala Referendum #195 and Karura Referendum #137. Users holding external assets on either chain must withdraw them before the deadline. That covers DOT, KSM, and bridged stablecoins such as USDT and USDC. The native tokens are a different story. ACA and KAR cannot be withdrawn and will stay on their respective chains, so those tokens have nowhere to go once the networks stop running. There are also earlier deadlines for liquid staking positions. Users must unbond LDOT by January 12, 2027, and LKSM by February 2, 2027. Unbonding is the process of pulling staked tokens out of a st...