Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author | Asher (@Asher_ 0210)
Last weekend, the well-established crypto exchange BitMart suddenly announced an orderly cessation of operations, once again sparking discussions in the market about the survival status of crypto projects.
In fact, since the beginning of this year, it is not only small to medium-sized projects that have chosen to shut down; there have also been star projects that once raised tens of millions of dollars and had millions of users, even once standing at the forefront of niche tracks.
From NFTs, DeFi, Layer 2, to wallets, exchanges, and infrastructure, the reasons for the project's downfall vary. Odaily Planet Daily has compiled a list of high-funding, high-profile crypto projects that have announced their closure this year to see why these projects, once favored by capital and the market, ultimately failed to survive.
Reason for Closure 1: Non-viable Business Model
This type of project is not without users, trading volume, or investment; many project data was once quite impressive, but ultimately they failed to convert their scale into sufficient income to support long-term team operations.
Zapper
Zapper was established in 2019 and is one of the most well-known asset management and portfolio tracking tools in early DeFi, with peak monthly active users exceeding 2 million and cumulative trading volume over $13 billion. The project has raised approximately $16.5 million, completing a $15 million Series A led by Framework Ventures and Sound Ventures in 2021.
Zapper initially rapidly accumulated users through asset tracking and trading aggregation but then gradually expanded to NFTs, on-chain social, blockchain browsers, and data APIs, without ever forming a stable income that matched its user scale. Even with peak monthly active users exceeding 2 million and processing trading volume over $13 billion, these traffic and trading scales failed to convert into sustainable commercial returns. After evaluating multiple operation continuation plans, the team ultimately chose to exit in an orderly manner and plans to close its official website, App, and API services on August 3.
Everclear
Everclear was formerly known as the cross-chain protocol Connext, founded in 2017, and later turned into a cross-chain clearing and settlement network. The project has raised approximately $26.7 million, with investors including Polychain Capital, Coinbase Ventures, 1kx, and others.
The team stated that users were highly sensitive to pricing, and the onboarding progress from several already contracted major clients was slower than expected. Before stable income from related collaborations was formed, project funds had been exhausted, leading to the ultimate decision to shut down the protocol and the team.
DL News
DL News was launched in 2022, initially as the news division of the DeFi data platform DefiLlama, focusing on independent reporting and investigative journalism, aiming to distinguish itself from traditional media's biases against crypto and to avoid the problems of excessive hype seen in industry media.
After internal conflicts at DefiLlama in 2023, both sides decoupled, and DL News lost traffic support from DefiLlama; at the same time, traffic for crypto and tech media generally declined, with AI search and content aggregation further diverting website visits. Although its DL Research saw revenue grow 270% in 2025 with an annual revenue exceeding $1 million, it was still insufficient to sustain the entire media business, leading to its closure at the end of May this year.
Fantasy.top
Fantasy.top, launched in 2024, is a SocialFi game from the Blast ecosystem that turns Crypto KOLs into NFT cards, with users forming teams to compete based on KOL interactions on X. The project has raised $4.25 million, led by Dragonfly with participation from Manifold Ventures.
Fantasy.top initially relied on NFT card trading for substantial income, but the team found that trading volume could not sustain long-term game operations. It later attempted to predict market, social data, and other gameplay, but never found a sustainable direction that could continuously attract users and support income. The team ultimately announced the end of operations in May this year and completed the shut down in June.
Satori Finance
Satori Finance launched in 2022 as a multi-chain perpetual contract DEX, covering networks like Arbitrum, Base, and zkSync. The project completed $10 million in funding led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Jump Crypto, and others, and has exceeded $134 billion in cumulative perpetual contract trading volume.
Despite the massive cumulative trading scale, actual sustainable income was limited
Yupp
Yupp is an AI model evaluation platform, allowing users to compare hundreds of AI models for free and help model vendors obtain preference data through feedback. The project raised $33 million in seed funding, led by a16z crypto.
As model capabilities rapidly improved, the industry focus shifted from simple chatbots to Agents, and the demand from model vendors for public crowdsourced evaluation data also changed. The team ultimately decided to halt further investments and return the remaining funds to investors.
Legend
Legend was founded in 2024 by several former Compound executives and is positioned as a mobile DeFi Super App for mainstream users, integrating the yields, lending, and trading functionalities of protocols like Aave, Compound, and Uniswap into one application. It completed $15 million in financing in 2025, with investments from a16z crypto and Coinbase Ventures.
Founder Jayson Hobby reflected that mainstream users do not care whether products are "on-chain", but are more concerned about yields, payment speed, and other practical experiences; simply lowering the DeFi adoption barrier is not enough to achieve widespread adoption. The team ultimately decided to halt further investments, and the application officially closed on July 12 of this year.
Entropy
Entropy was established in 2021, initially focusing on decentralized asset custody and threshold signature infrastructure, and later adjusted its direction several times. The project raised nearly $27 million, including a $25 million seed round led by a16z in 2022, with participation from Dragonfly, Variant, Coinbase Ventures, and others.
After experiencing many transformations and two rounds of layoffs, Entropy pivoted in 2025 to become a crypto automation platform, aiming to become the "Crypto version of Zapier/n8nC." However, early market feedback indicated that this model was difficult to grow to the scale demanded by VCs. The founder was unwilling to pivot again and ultimately chose to shut down the company, returning the remaining funds to investors.
Reason for Closure 2: Cooling of the Track
This type of project once hit upon a hot narrative, but real market demand ultimately did not develop to the scale initially expected. As the field cooled down, the original growth logic also ceased to be valid.
NFTfi
NFTfi was launched in 2020 and is one of the earliest NFT collateral lending protocols, allowing holders to pledge NFTs for liquidity. The project has completed 6 rounds of financing, with a total fundraising of approximately $11.89 million, including a $6 million Series A funding round in 2024. Over 6 years of operation, the platform has facilitated over $737 million in loans and 82,000 peer-to-peer loans.
As the NFT market continues to shrink, NFTfi's potential income can no longer cover the operational costs of the protocol. Although the team still sees long-term value in NFTs, there is uncertainty about when the market will recover, and they cannot continue to subsidize protocol operations long-term, leading to the decision to stop new loans and plan to close the frontend by August 31 of this year, while keeping the on-chain contracts active.
Parsec
Parsec started in 2020 as a data analysis tool for Uniswap v1, and subsequently developed into an on-chain data terminal for DeFi and NFTs, providing custom dashboards, APIs, and other services. The project has raised approximately $5.25 million, with investors including Galaxy Digital, Polychain Capital, Uniswap Ventures, Robot Ventures, and others.
The core demand for Parsec once came from leveraged trading in DeFi and during the active phase of NFTs, especially gaining significant usage during the series of collapses involving Terra and 3AC. However, after the collapse of FTX, the structure of DeFi spot lending and leveraged trading underwent significant changes, and the original demand never recovered, while the NFT market also continued to cool down. Founder Will Sheehan admitted that the team mistook market directions multiple times and ultimately closed the platform in February of this year, refunding remaining subscription fees.
MilkyWay
MilkyWay launched in 2023, initially as the first liquid staking protocol in the Celestia ecosystem, later expanding to Initia, Babylon, and restaking services, with TVL reaching $250 million at one point. The project has raised approximately $6 million, with $5 million from a seed round led by Polychain Capital and investment from Binance Labs, Hack VC, and others.
Celestia DeFi's activity did not explode as the team expected, and restaking demand quickly receded. MilkyWay then tried to pivot to RWA and payment card services, but found no sustainable business direction. The team ultimately decided to permanently close the protocol.
Tally
Tally was founded in 2020 as an on-chain governance infrastructure platform, providing voting, proposal, and delegation tools for over 500 DAOs including Uniswap, Arbitrum, and ENS. The project has raised about $17 million, with an $8 million Series A completed in 2025, and investments from AppWorks, Blockchain Capital, 1kx, and others.
Tally originally bet on the emergence of thousands of L2s and numerous DAOs in the future. However, the industry ultimately consolidated around a few leading protocols, and consumer-grade on-chain applications did not explode as expected, leading to far fewer potential customers for governance tools than anticipated. As the regulatory environment relaxed, the motivation for the project to achieve decentralized governance through DAOs further declined. Tally once planned to find new growth through an ICO but ultimately abandoned the token issuance and announced its closure in March of this year.
Botanix
Botanix was started in 2022, focusing on a Bitcoin-based EVM-compatible layer 2 Spiderchain, hoping to develop BTCFi without relying on token issuance, points, and airdrop incentives. The project raised a total of $11.5 million, with investors including Polychain Capital, Placeholder, Valor Equity Partners, ABCDE, and others.
Botanix ultimately did not witness the anticipated Bitcoin DeFi demand. The team found that demands for lending, yield, and leverage could largely be met through WBTC and established L2s, with users lacking sufficient motivation to migrate to a dedicated Bitcoin L2; the fees generated by the network were also insufficient to support infrastructure costs. Meanwhile, on-chain traffic further concentrated on platforms like Hyperliquid and CEXs with direct user entry points. Botanix announced the cessation of operations in June of this year and entered the network delisting process.
Colony
Colony was established in 2021 as an investment and acceleration platform focusing on Avalanche, raising approximately $19.5 million, with investors including Avalanche Foundation, HashKey Capital, Shima Capital, GBV Capital, and others, providing early investment and liquidity support for Avalanche projects over the long term.
As the number of new projects within the Avalanche ecosystem declined and the quality of projects deteriorated, external VC participation also continuously decreased. The team's HyperSDK product, developed over more than a year, was forced to be put on hold due to Avalanche's adjustment of its technical route, followed by another key project, BTC.b, losing its grounding due to changes in asset management rights. After two consecutive failures in core bets, Colony announced the end of its five-year operations in the Avalanche ecosystem and halted application services in July.
Reason for Closure 3: Security Incidents
This type of closure is not just a matter of whether the product has demand. Hacker attacks, asset losses, liquidity exhaustion, and depletion of funding runs ultimately leave projects unable to sustain operations.
AscendEX
AscendEX was formerly BitMax, launched in 2018, as a centralized exchange providing spot, derivatives, and staking services. In 2021, it completed a $50 million Series B financing, led by Polychain Capital, Hack VC, with participation from Jump Capital, Alameda Research, and others.
AscendEX suffered a hot wallet attack in 2021, resulting in losses of around $77.7 million, and the platform subsequently promised to fully compensate users. By the time of its shutdown this year, funding pressures were again exposed, the strategic trading plan to supplement liquidity failed to be completed, and user withdrawals began to be restricted, with the platform ultimately pausing automatic withdrawals and stating it could not guarantee withdrawal time and amounts. The official statement also mentioned pressures from MiCA compliance and other financial and operational factors, and AscendEX officially ceased operations on July 1.
ZeroLend
ZeroLend launched in 2023, deploying on multiple chains such as zkSync, Linea, Manta, etc., as a DeFi lending protocol, reaching a peak TVL of nearly $359 million. The project raised $3 million in seed funding in 2024, with investors including Morningstar Ventures, Cypher Capital, and others.
In February 2025, ZeroLend's LBTC market on Base was attacked, with the attacker exploiting related mechanisms to withdraw approximately 3.92 LBTC; affected users could only receive partial compensation by the time of the project's closure. Subsequently, ZeroLend faced issues such as liquidity exhaustion from early supported chains like Manta, Zircuit, and XLayer, combined with low lending business margins and high security costs, leading the protocol to remain in a state of losses for an extended period, ultimately prompting the team to decide to cease operations.
Ctrl Wallet
Ctrl Wallet, formerly XDEFI Wallet, was established in 2020 and is a self-custodied wallet that focuses on multi-chain asset management, swaps, and DApp interactions. The project has raised approximately $26.6 million, with investors including Mechanism Capital, DeFiance Capital, and others.
On June 23 of this year, Ctrl Wallet disclosed a security incident stating that some Cardano wallets were affected, and related functionalities were paused, with the specific loss amount not disclosed. Subsequently, the platform did not fully recover and announced a permanent shutdown just about two weeks later on July 7, removing itself from app stores and ceasing transfers, swaps, and other major functionalities starting August 3.
Syndicate
Syndicate was established in 2021, initially providing on-chain investment club and DAO tools, later pivoting towards Rollups, application chains, and sequencer infrastructure. The project has raised approximately $27.8 million, including $20 million in Series A financing led by a16z in 2021, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Electric Capital, and others.
In April of this year, Syndicate's official cross-chain bridge Commons was attacked, with the attacker withdrawing and dumping approximately 18.5 million SYND, cashing out about $330,000. Commons subsequently closed, and a month later, Syndicate announced its closure.
Reason for Closure 4: Abandonment of the Original Technical Route
Some projects did not suddenly encounter cash flow crises but gradually lost their technological advantages and existence value during industry iterations. For these long-running old projects, the final choice was to directly abandon the old route.
Loopring
Loopring was founded in 2017 and is one of the earliest zkRollup projects on Ethereum, focusing on Layer 2 DEXs, payments, and smart wallets, raising about $45 million in its 2017 ICO. In June of this year, Loopring officially closed its DEX and ceased syncing.
The team admitted that early zkRollups lacked a virtual machine and composability, and payment scenarios had never gained substantial adoption. The subsequent zkEVM route was surpassed by a new generation of compatible solutions, compounded by LRC being delisted from major exchanges in 2026, further shrinking the ecosystem. In 2024, Loopring also experienced a breach in Guardian services, resulting in about $5 million in stolen assets, followed by the gradual exit of its wallet and several DeFi products.
ICON
ICON was launched in 2017, representing an early layer 1 in South Korea, focusing on blockchain interoperability. The project initially raised about $43 million, with participation from Pantera Capital, Kenetic Capital, and others. After nearly 9 years of operation, ICON's technology and community gradually migrated to the cross-chain DeFi infrastructure SODAX.
As the industry infrastructure matured, the team believed that continuing to maintain an independent Layer 1 would disperse funds and development resources, leading to the decision to stop ICX incentives and concentrate resources on SODAX. ICON entered the economic shutdown phase in March of this year and plans to permanently cease network operations on December 31.
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