Author: Nancy, PANews
On July 30, Starknet ecosystem derivative DEX ZKX claimed that it would cease operations due to a serious imbalance between revenue and expenditure, which was questioned and condemned by the community. It should be noted that the protocol officially announced that it had obtained $7.6 million in strategic financing more than a month ago. In fact, under multiple tests such as tightening funds, liquidity risks and industry downturn, the survival index of crypto projects has soared, even those that were once favored by capital. According to a report by Coingecko at the beginning of this year, 14,039 cryptocurrencies have "died" since 2024, accounting for more than 50%, and most of the projects appeared during the bull market from 2020 to 2021. During the last bull market alone, about 70% of the 11,000 crypto projects had ceased operations.
In this article, PANews has compiled 35 "out" projects that raised more than $5 million since last year, including projects that were once favored by well-known capital or backed by giants, mainly involving NFT, DeFi, and games. Among these closed projects, there are veterans on the decline and rookies that suddenly collapsed. Most of them ended due to financial problems, market downturn, regulatory pressure, and low product adoption.
The total financing of the shut-down projects exceeded US$1.1 billion, and DeFi, NFT and games are struggling to survive
Although the crypto market has entered a stage where capital is in control, financing alone does not mean that it can smoothly cross the bubble cycle. According to incomplete statistics from PANews, since 2023, 35 crypto projects with financing of more than US$5 million have been shut down, with a cumulative financing amount of nearly US$1.17 billion and an average amount of about US$34 million. Among them, the three projects with the highest financing are Voice, Prime Trust and LINE NFT, which have received a total of more than US$600 million in financing.
"It's fun to be in the spotlight for a while, but it's a disaster to review." Although there are many successful cases of surviving industry risks, the investment market is so cruel. Judging from the tracks to which these failed projects belong, DeFi, NFT and gaming are the main narratives of capital betting. The number of failed projects in these three fields accounted for 22.8%, 11.4% and 8.5% respectively, and the investment amounts were approximately US$170 million, US$530 million and US$35 million, respectively, accounting for about 62.8% of the total financing amount of the overall closed projects.
Behind these high-value financings, there are many star VCs, such as Coinbase Ventures, Paradigm, Binance Labs, Sequoia China, Circle Ventures, Galaxy Digital, a16z, Polychain, as well as the bankrupt Alameda Research and Three Arrows Capital. Among them, Coinbase Ventures, Alameda Research, Three Arrows Capital and Polychain are the most prone to "mines", having participated in at least three failed projects. Of course, this is also closely related to their high-frequency investment activities.
In addition, from the perspective of the establishment timeline, the projects launched between 2020 and 2021 had the highest failure rate, accounting for about 61.7% of the total statistics, and received a total of more than US$430 million in financing. Among them, 16 failed projects were from 2021, mainly DeFi and NFT projects.
In the wave of crypto closures, these factors have become the main fuse
In the rapidly changing crypto market environment, the failure cases of these crypto projects have undoubtedly sounded the alarm for the industry. Overall, most of the projects were due to market cooling, financial difficulties, stricter supervision and insufficient product penetration.
The prosperity of the industry is an important factor affecting the survival and development of projects, especially in the "cold winter" environment, successful "survival" has become a difficult problem for major projects. According to PANews statistics, at least 5 projects have had to stop operating due to market problems.
Take the NFT market as an example. As we all know, the NFT market has continued to show a downward trend after the craze subsided, and market demand has become increasingly sluggish. According to a recent report from the data tracking platform CryptoSlam, the current monthly sales of the NFT market have dropped to US$393 million, the lowest monthly sales since November 2023. With such a sharp decline in transactions, the NFT market is inevitably experiencing a wave of suspensions, even though many of them have strong backgrounds and huge financing.
For example, LINE NFT, the NFT market under Japanese communication giant LINE, terminated its services after only two years of operation despite receiving a high amount of financing of approximately US$150 million; NAEMO Market, backed by Bithumb Meta, a metaverse company under Bithumb, also ceased operations due to continuous losses since its establishment, which also resulted in the loss of approximately US$7.3 million in investment from several large Korean companies including LG CNS, a subsidiary of LG, CJ OliveNetworks, a subsidiary of CJ, and Dreamus, an affiliate of SK Square, an investment company of SK Group; Recur, an NFT brand experience platform that had received US$55 million in financing, was also closed after more than two years of operation due to unforeseen challenges in the NFT market and changes in the business landscape.
At the same time, although financing can alleviate the "blocking points" of project survival and development to a certain extent, it is difficult to obtain sustainable survival space without a benign and viable survival model. According to PANews statistics, at least 7 or more projects were closed because the expected income could not cover the expenditure costs or even exceeded the financing funds.
For example, ZKX received a total of $12.1 million in two rounds of financing, but still chose to stop operating because it could not find an economically viable path. According to its founder, ZKX's decision to stop operating was based on several key factors, including extremely low user participation, TGE not meeting expectations, etc. The platform's revenue was barely enough to pay for wages and other basic operating costs, and the current token value could not sustainably support the protocol. Of course, this situation is related to the current "resistance" of VC coins by retail investors. In fact, the huge amount of selling pressure to be unlocked has caused VC coins to gradually lose "popular support" in this round of bull market. This investment background has become an "invisible shackle" that constrains the development of encryption projects.
The same problem also occurred to the liquidity staking platform ClayStack. After more than three years of continuous operation, more than six product audits, and a seed round of financing of up to US$5.2 million, the platform announced a gradual suspension of operations in May this year due to lack of resources and insufficient product-market fit. The cross-chain liquidity aggregation protocol Via Protocol, which received US$1.2 million in financing, also chose to terminate cooperation because it could no longer afford the server costs.
Financial difficulties also erode the value of projects to a great extent, and even face the risk of bankruptcy. Among the above failed projects, 5 projects are facing survival difficulties due to funding problems. For example, Jet Protocol, which received $11.6 million in financing from Paradigm and others, DAO creation platform Superdao, and blockchain game project Ascenders all fell into financial difficulties and chose to close.
In addition, regulatory compliance is also a major challenge facing crypto projects. In fact, as the size of the crypto market grows, global regulatory hammers are frequently launched, relevant compliance requirements are becoming increasingly stringent, and the pressure of supervision and review faced by related projects is increasing. At least 5 projects in the statistical project were eventually closed due to regulatory factors. For example, the privacy protocol Nocturne, founded in 2023, decided to gradually close in June this year after receiving $6 million in support from investors including Bain Capital Crypto, Polychain, Bankless Ventures, Hack VC, Robot Ventures and Vitalik Buterin. This decision was made after the privacy protocol established earlier last year ceased operations due to regulatory pressure. For another example, the crypto investment application Pillow was forced to drown in the torrent of crypto history due to regulatory uncertainty despite receiving $21 million in financing.
Of course, some projects also went bankrupt due to black swan events such as core team loss of contact, hacker attacks, and investment failures. Among the 35 closed projects, many projects went bankrupt without any warning, and some of the coin issuance projects caused huge losses to investors. For example, the metaverse game ecosystem DeHorizon and the metaverse project Pax.world have not issued any announcements, and the tokens are now almost zero and have not even been listed on centralized exchanges.
It is worth mentioning that although some projects that closed down due to different reasons have given positive follow-up plans compared to the projects that directly rugged up, some of the projects that closed down voluntarily have also given positive follow-up plans. For example, ZKX closed all market positions and all funds were returned to each user's trading account, and LINE NFT returned all assets on sale after closing.
