Upbit Suspends ARDR and IGNIS Deposits/Withdrawals Ahead of Ardor Hard Fork
South Korea’s major exchange Upbit will suspend deposits and withdrawals for ARDR and IGNIS at 03:00 UTC on Feb 2 to support a planned Ardor network hard fork. The pause targets on-chain movements only; trading on Upbit order books may remain available. The suspension is a standard exchange security procedure to prevent double-spends, balance inconsistencies, and other risks during a non-backward-compatible protocol upgrade. Ardor (ARDR) is the parent chain and Ignis (IGNIS) a primary child chain; both require node and wallet software updates. Upbit will perform pre-fork testing, wallet maintenance, security audits and post-fork reconciliation before resuming services and will announce when deposits/withdrawals are re-enabled. Traders should expect temporary operational disruption but no immediate change in token supply; historically, well-executed hard forks cause short-term volatility followed by stabilization if upgrades are successful. No new token is expected from this consensus-driven upgrade. Keywords: Ardor hard fork, Upbit suspension, ARDR, IGNIS, deposits withdrawals, network upgrade.
Neutral
This event is primarily operational and regulatory in nature rather than a market-driven shock. Exchange suspensions for deposits and withdrawals during planned hard forks are routine risk-management measures intended to protect user funds. Historically, such suspensions produce short-term volatility as traders react to uncertainty and liquidity constraints, but they do not inherently change fundamentals or token supply when the upgrade is non-contentious. Because Upbit is a large exchange, the announcement reduces informational asymmetry and lowers execution risk compared with an unexpected outage, which mitigates panic selling. Expected short-term effects: increased volatility and potential temporary spreads on ARDR/IGNIS pairs, limited arbitrage opportunities across exchanges if other platforms maintain deposits. Expected long-term effects: neutral to modestly positive if the hard fork yields performance or security improvements that enhance network utility; conversely, problems during the fork could be bearish. On balance, given this is a planned, consensus-driven upgrade with clear communication from a major exchange, classify the market impact as neutral.