Ethereum bridge users have 24 hours to exit before chain shuts down after just 5 week warning

Here is the latest from the digital-asset markets: Powerloom, a blockchain network built for decentralized data infrastructure, is scheduled to halt permanently at 6:00 AM UTC on July 21. Users with POWER or other transferable assets still held on the network have under 24 hours to move them to Ethereum as of press time. Currently, Powerloom's official wind-down page lists the bridge as active.

The project's final reminder directed users to initiate a withdrawal through the official bridge and complete the claim on Ethereum before the cutoff. The bridge only covers balances already available for transfer on Powerloom. Reward claims, unstaking, and node burns closed when mint.

Market Dynamics

network went offline at 6:00 AM UTC on July 16. Powerloom says unclaimed rewards, staked POWER, or node-slot funds that still depended on those dashboard workflows can no longer be recovered. The remaining eligible group is holders with liquid on-chain balances; users waiting on claims or unstaking have no recovery path.

Related Reading Latest bear market victim shows how quickly DeFi users are left behind when crypto projects move on Swell warned users to bridge out by June 23, turning a planned L2 shutdown into a test of user exit procedures. Jun 24, 2026 Liam 'Akiba' Wright What disappears after the deadline Powerloom says the chain will stop producing blocks at shutdown. Contracts and state on the network will become inaccessible, and the Arbitrum-based bridge will stop functioning because it will no longer have an operating source chain to connect to.

That dependency is the wider risk behind the deadline. A bridge works only while both sides of a transfer remain available. When one underlying chain is retired, the exit route can vanish even though the destination network continues operating.

Market Impact

In Powerloom's case, balances left behind can become stranded with the chain's inaccessible state. Related Reading Crypto users told to pull funds after Ethereum L2 bridge failure exposes rollup exit risk The incident forced users to confront the part of rollup security that usually stays invisible: whether they can still withdraw when the bridge layer breaks. Jun 23, 2026 Liam 'Akiba' Wright Ethereum-held POWER remains separate from the shutdown.

Powerloom says its ERC-20 contract at 0x429F0d8233e517f9acf6F0C8293BF35804063a83 is immutable and will remain accessible on-chain. The deadline applies to assets and application state left on Powerloom, including balances that are not bridged in time. The POWER contract already deployed on the Ethereum network sits outside that deadline.

In a June 15 wind-down announcement, Powerloom's founders said they had concluded that the project lacked a sustainable operating model, continued ecosystem demand, and sufficient resources to support the network over the long term. The founders stated, “After a hard review of Powerloom’s path forward, I and Swaroop have decided to wind down Powerloom. This is not the outcome we wanted.

Crypto markets are watching this development closely as investors weigh its potential impact on prices.