CARTEL
Moonlander, one of the best-known perpetual trading platforms on Cronos, is closing. On November 14, 2026, every page of moonlander.trade carried the same banner: "Moonlander is being sunset: you may only close or manage positions, sell MLP, and unstake FM and CM." The trading screen adds that new trades are disabled.
If you ever traded, provided liquidity or staked on Moonlander, this article explains what you can still do and how to do it safely.
What Moonlander was
Moonlander is a decentralized perpetual exchange: it lets traders open leveraged long and short positions. According to DefiLlama, it ran on both Cronos EVM and Cronos zkEVM.
It had serious backing. On September 22, 2025, Crypto.com Capital announced a strategic investment in Moonlander. The amount was not disclosed. The project says its contracts were audited by CertiK and publishes five reports on its security page.
The protocol has three tokens, listed on its smart contracts page:
- MLP: the liquidity token. People who deposited funds into the trading pool received MLP. This pool was the counterparty to traders.
- FM (Full Moon): the governance token, with a total supply of 20 billion according to its tokenomics page, which matches what the contract reports. It could be staked to earn a share of protocol revenue. FM is listed on MemesOnCronos: see the Full Moon (FM) page.
- CM (Crescent Moon): the second token of Moonlander's staking system.
What the numbers show
The wind-down is visible on the chain. According to DefiLlama, the value locked in Moonlander on Cronos EVM was steady at around $19 million from July to late September 2026. It then fell quickly:
- about $18.9 million on September 26;
- about $15.9 million on October 6;
- about $10.9 million on October 16;
- about $7.9 million on November 5;
- about $47,000 on November 14, plus about $5,600 on Cronos zkEVM.
On November 14, Moonlander's own About page showed $6,209.85 of trading volume over 24 hours and $0.00 of open interest, against a lifetime volume of $8.23 billion. On the same day, the MLP contract reported a total supply of about 43,660 MLP, read directly on Cronos EVM. Most liquidity providers have already left.
The FM token's own market moved too. Our Cronos rug pull and honeypot tracker shows that on November 9, 2026, a single transaction removed $585,284 of liquidity from FM's pools, and on November 14 the tracker showed about $15,700 left in those pools (a figure that moves with prices). The tracker describes what happened on the chain, not who was behind it. In the context of the sunset, it means that selling FM now moves the price much more than before.
What you can still do
The sunset notice lists three actions. Use only the official site, moonlander.trade, and type the address yourself.
1. Close your open positions
If you still have a position, close it from the trading screen. New positions are disabled, but closing and managing existing ones is still allowed.
2. Sell your MLP
If you provided liquidity, sell your MLP to get your funds back. The site links to a dedicated page for this, in its Earn section (moonlander.trade/earn/mlp). If your MLP is staked, check the Earn section for any step needed before you can sell.
3. Unstake your FM and CM
If you staked FM or CM, unstake them from the Earn section (moonlander.trade/earn/fmcm). Unstaking returns the tokens to your wallet. It does not turn them into cash. With the protocol closing, FM's main use as a revenue-sharing token disappears, and what you do with it afterwards is your decision.
Watch out for fake tokens and fake helpers
Shutdowns attract scammers. Three precautions:
- Check the FM contract. The official FM address, listed on Moonlander's smart contracts page, is
0x37888159581ac2CdeA5Fb9C3ed50265a19EDe8Dd. On DexScreener we found a different token, also using the ticker FM and the name "MOONLANDER", at0xa978171C16EED8A858d62fBEFF271D752cE71177, with a pool created on October 16, 2026 and only a few thousand dollars of liquidity. It is not on Moonlander's official list. Do not confuse the two. You can check any token with our free security scanner. - Nobody needs your recovery phrase to "recover" funds. Ignore direct messages offering help, migration or compensation. Moonlander's official channels are linked from its site.
- Revoke old approvals once you have withdrawn. Our guide How to Revoke Token and NFT Approvals on Cronos shows how.
What we could not confirm
We could not find a public announcement giving the date the sunset was decided, a deadline for withdrawals, or the reason for the closure. Moonlander's documentation does not mention the sunset, and we could not read its posts on X automatically. Do not assume the withdrawal pages will stay online forever: if you still have funds in Moonlander, act now.
If you also hold assets on Cronos zkEVM, which is shutting down too, read Cronos zkEVM Alpha Shuts Down on June 3, 2027: How to Withdraw.
Why it matters for Cronos
Moonlander was one of the few large derivatives venues native to Cronos. Its wind-down started a few weeks after the Tectonic exploit of August 30, 2026, which halted Cronos block production for about 9 hours. We do not know whether the two are linked. The lesson is not new, but it is worth repeating: even a protocol with well-known backers can close. Keep in DeFi only what you can monitor, and know how to withdraw before you need to.
Sources: moonlander.trade (trading and About pages), Moonlander documentation (smart contracts, security audit, tokenomics), DefiLlama, DL News, DexScreener, the MemesOnCronos rug pull tracker and our own reading of the MLP and FM contracts on Cronos EVM, all on November 14, 2026. This article is for information only. Always do your own research. Nothing on MemesOnCronos is financial advice.
