Major DeFi protocols are quietly ghosting Discord, shifting their public servers to read-only mode and funneling users toward ticketed help desks and live support systems. The pivot, spotlighted this week by lending protocol Morpho, underscores a growing consensus that Discord has transformed from a community hub into a liability minefield.
The root cause is security—or rather, the catastrophic lack of it. Discord's architecture makes it nearly impossible to fully shield users from scammers, who lurk in open channels and slide into DMs of anyone asking for help. Morpho co-founder Merlin Egalite admitted the move was "not an easy choice," but despite heavy moderation, users kept getting phished. The protocol is now trialing tools like Intercom for ticket management and AI-assisted responses, because apparently, humans are too fallible.
DefiLlama founder 0xngmi echoed these gripes, stating that Discord makes it "impossible to protect users," as scammers can still DM them directly even after being booted from servers. DefiLlama has been quietly pivoting toward live support chats and email tickets, basically admitting that the wild west of chat rooms is no place for managing sensitive financial queries.
Industry voices are largely cheering the exodus. Dragonfly's Richard Rodairos called public Discord servers "one of the lowest signal surfaces in the space," urging projects to prioritize clear documentation and asynchronous support—because nothing says "efficient" like waiting for a ticket response. Aavechan's Marc Zeller branded Discord "full of scammers" and urged Aave to follow Morpho's lead. Even Nifty Gateway co-founder Duncan Cock Foster threw shade, calling Discord moderation "the worst part" of running his former company, which is saying something for an NFT marketplace.
However, not everyone is ready to hit the eject button. Some community members argue that Discord is central to DeFi's ethos of open, peer-to-peer collaboration, allowing users to share experiences and follow development in real time. Others blame poor execution rather than the platform itself, suggesting that well-moderated servers with proper security measures can still thrive—because clearly, the answer to rampant scams is just more moderators with nothing better to do.
The debate arrives amid heightened security concerns for Discord, following a recent breach where an unauthorized party accessed a third-party Zendesk system, exposing sensitive user data. As DeFi matures, the industry seems to be weighing the trade-off between open community spaces and user safety, essentially deciding if the chaos of public chats is worth the inevitable rug pull of trust.
