StellaSwap V4 Review 2026: Moonbeam DEX That Has Sunset

StellaSwap was a decentralized exchange on Moonbeam, a smart-contract network in the Polkadot ecosystem. Its homepage says it has officially sunset and is no longer in operation, after more than four years of running. The notice gives a period of 12 December 2021 to 31 July 2026.

The project described itself as a DEX and DeFi gateway on Moonbeam, offering swaps, yield farming, staking and liquidity provision. Its public pages also mention a V3 version with limit orders and a V4 version with single-asset deposits and liquid staking. DefiLlama listed it in the decentralized exchange category, tied to the Moonbeam chain and the STELLA token.

For a current user, the practical point is that the protocol is closed. The only contact the notice gives is Discord, and the material reviewed does not list withdrawal steps or a settlement process.

StellaSwap was a decentralized exchange, or DEX, which means trades happened through smart contracts rather than through a company's order book. Users swapped tokens against pools of funds supplied by other users, called liquidity providers. Each trade paid a small fee that went back into the pool, and the price moved with the ratio of tokens in it.

Liquidity providers earned those fees and, on StellaSwap, additional farming rewards paid in its STELLA token. Its V4 version was described as allowing a single-asset deposit, so a user could add one token instead of a matched pair. Users could also stake STELLA and receive a liquid staking token, which could be used while the stake was earning.

The STELLA token had a vote-escrow model. Locking STELLA produced veSTELLA, which gave holders more say in governance and often a larger share of rewards. Because the project has now sunset, none of these mechanisms are running, and the public material does not explain how any remaining balances are settled.

StellaSwap's fee schedule is not published in the material reviewed. Trading fees, pool fees and any staking or farming charges would have been shown in the app and on the project's documentation site. Anyone checking historical costs should look there, as the sunset notice does not restate them.

DefiLlama lists zero audits for StellaSwap, and the public material reviewed does not name an auditor or link to audit reports. A decentralized exchange is non-custodial in principle, so users held their own funds in their wallets while interacting with its smart contracts. That also meant they carried the risk of bugs in those contracts and in any bridge or wallet they used.

The homepage describes the sunset as an orderly wind-down, but the material does not explain how remaining liquidity or token balances were handled. No specific incidents, hacks or regulatory actions are reported in the public material reviewed.

Decentralized finance is not regulated like a bank, and the public material does not state a licence or regulator for StellaSwap. Anyone with past exposure should treat any unexpected request for funds or wallet access as a likely scam.

This page is mainly useful for readers who used StellaSwap before it closed and need to understand its history and what remains to be done. It is also relevant to anyone researching Moonbeam's DeFi ecosystem or comparing it with other Moonbeam exchanges. It is not suitable for anyone looking for an active place to trade or earn yield.