From $230M Hack to 20x Leverage: WazirX's Risky New Bet

WazirX has introduced two new products in March 2026: INR-denominated perpetual futures with leverage up to 20x, and a partnership with Sikka.fun, a mobile-first memecoin launchpad built on Shardeum. The moves come as the exchange still faces lingering fallout from a $230 million hack in July 2024 that froze funds for 4.4 million users.

The futures product, announced on March 13, offers early access to traders. Two days later, WazirX revealed the Sikka.fun integration, offering the first 1,000 users who generate a “Sikka Key” and verify on the Android app 50,000 SHM tokens each — worth approximately $4.50 at current prices. SHM, the native token of Shardeum, has fallen over 99.9% from its all-time high of $0.37 in May 2025 and now trades near $0.00009. Shardeum’s market cap sits below $1 million.

WazirX remains in recovery mode after the 2024 Lazarus Group attack forced a 16-month shutdown. Trading resumed in October 2025 under a Singapore court-approved restructuring scheme that socialized losses across all users. Roughly 85% of pre-hack balances were restored, while the remaining 15% were converted into non-tradable Recovery Tokens (RTs) credited in January 2026. To date, only about $3 million of the stolen funds have been frozen, and no RT buyback has been publicly reported. Nischal Shetty, WazirX’s co-founder, has acknowledged the exchange needs to generate $235 million in revenue over three years to make whole RT holders.

Critics point to potential conflicts of interest: Shetty is also co-founder of Shardeum and Pi42, a competing crypto-INR futures exchange. WazirX has listed SHM, run trading contests sponsored by Shardeum, and now partnered with Sikka.fun — all of which funnel activity back into Shetty’s Shardeum ecosystem. There has been no public disclosure on whether revenue from these integrations flows into the RT buyback pool.

Regulatory concerns also loom. Crypto futures in India lack the investor protections of traditional markets, and WazirX’s moves follow its controversial ZERO subscription plan in December 2025, where users alleged auto-enrollment and token sales to cover fees. With unanswered questions about revenue allocation and unresolved obligations, each new product launch sharpens scrutiny on the gap between what WazirX is building and what it still owes its users.