The on-chain vote to retire the Vega chain has now passed almost unanimously. This means that the Vega community has decided to move forward with the proposal outlined in our two recent blog posts to refocus the project’s remaining resources on supporting the maintenance and development of the core protocol software, and to end our support as a community for the Vega chain and VEGA token.
Now that this has happened, the Vega chain no longer supports trading on any markets and is expected to stop after a “ramp down” period during which validators are incentivised to keep nodes operational to allow users to withdraw funds from the network. These things have now been automatically enacted on chain as a result of the governance vote.
### Final vote to settle markets
There is now one final governance vote taking place on the Vega chain. This vote confirms the settlement prices at which the suspended markets will finally close and settle and directs ~$28k of unused insurance pool funds to validators to ensure the network operates for the agreed ramp down period.
This occurs as a separate vote because it’s best for the final settlement for a closed market to occur at the price when the market was suspended, which could not be known at the time of the initial proposal.
If you currently have VEGA staked and can do so, **please vote on this proposal and keep your tokens staked until 15:00 UTC on Friday, 13th September**.
The proposal can be found HERE.
### Withdrawing your assets from the Vega chain
Our understanding from the validators is that the Vega chain will remain operational until at least October 27th to allow users plenty of time to withdraw their assets.
Please look out for further updates or announcements and remember that if and when the chain halts, assets may become stuck on the bridge. If this happens, the team will not be able to retrieve them for you. At all times, only a quorum (at least two thirds) of validators can approve a withdrawal from the bridge and we have no way to release any stuck funds.
You may withdraw assets by visiting the Portfolio page and connecting your Vega and Ethereum/Arbitrum (depending on the asset) wallet.
Note that withdrawals require a transaction on the Vega chain using your Vega wallet **and** a transaction on the destination chain (Ethereum or Arbitrum) to complete the withdrawal. USDT withdrawals can only be completed after waiting for a 24 hour withdrawal delay. The link to complete the withdrawal will appear in the table on the bottom of the portfolio page, and you may need to scroll to the right to see all the columns.
### Claiming NEB
Before claiming NEB, if you wish to do so, please vote on the final proposal and keep your VEGA staked until 15:00 UTC on Friday, 13th September to assist with a smooth shutdown of the Vega chain.
The Nebula team have now launched their claim site.
Nebula is a recently announced independent project built with the Vega open source software. For any technical or product questions and support, please contact the Nebula team directly.