The depegging of the MSUSD stablecoin triggered a crisis of confidence in DeFi: the collapse of the reserve auditor and the closure of the $39 million fund.
On June 20, the MSUSD stablecoin from the Main Street Finance project lost its peg to the US dollar. The crash was catastrophic: the coin's price plummeted by more than 85% within hours, far exceeding the target mark of $1. This is not just another depeg, but a symptom of a systemic problem in the decentralized finance infrastructure.
The cause of the collapse was the termination of relations with the reserve verification provider Accountable. The service unilaterally stopped working with Main Street, citing the protocol's non-compliance with audit standards. As soon as monitoring was disabled, market trust evaporated instantly — the MSUSD rate collapsed by more than 90%. The Main Street team was quick to call the incident a "technical reporting issue," claiming that the assets are fully backed. To stabilize the situation, the developers allocated $8 million in USDC and began searching for a new auditor. However, the market had already reacted — panic spread to other projects.
Domino effect: closure of the Altura fund
The incident triggered a cascading crisis. The Altura protocol, which manages a $39 million vault, announced its closure due to a massive outflow of funds. Within 24 hours, users withdrew over $8.5 million in USDT. Altura's head, Ranvir Arora, emphasized that the project had no direct investments in MSUSD. However, the fatal factor was that both protocols used the same auditor — Accountable. The loss of trust in the counterparty instantly spread to Altura, causing a "bank run" at the DeFi level.
The Altura team stated that it would begin a phased return of funds to users. The process will be slowed down because part of the liquidity is placed in long-term strategies and real-world assets (RWA). Other Altura products continue to operate normally, but the damage has been done.
My analysis. This case is a vivid example of how fragile the stablecoin ecosystem is when it relies on one or several unverified auditors. The problem is not that MSUSD was "naked," but that the entire reserve verification system turned out to be centralized and opaque. Let me remind you that just a month ago, the total market capitalization of stablecoins hit an all-time high of $323 billion. Such incidents undermine trust not only in individual projects but also in the very instrument of "stablecoins." The market urgently needs decentralized and cryptographically provable reserve mechanisms, otherwise we will witness similar collapses again and again.