Incomplete list of dead projects in the cryptocurrency industry in 2022: over $3.6 billion in funding, heavily affected by the FTX and Terra events
Under the negative impact of events like Terra and FTX, a large number of cryptocurrency projects have been severely affected. Under the negative impact of events like Terra and FTX, a large number of cryptocurrency projects have been severely affected.Organizer: Biscuit, ChainCatcher
The crypto market in 2022 was filled with too much bad news—Terra collapsed in May, followed by the downfall of crypto giants like Three Arrows Capital and Voyager. By the end of the year, the exchange giant FTX also collapsed, dragging the entire market into a dismal bear market, directly or indirectly leading to the cessation of many crypto projects.
According to a report from Coingecko at the end of November, a total of 951 cryptocurrencies entered a state of death from January to November this year. A report from blockchain risk monitoring company Solidus Labs shows that from January 1 to December 1, 2022, fraudsters deployed over 117,000 scam tokens on-chain, a 41% increase compared to the entire year of 2021. Of course, this includes many so-called "meme coins" and "altcoins," which do not align with the conventional understanding of crypto startup projects.
Recently, the crypto data website RootData also released a project compilation titled "List of Dead Crypto Projects in 2022," which includes 96 crypto projects that died this year. These projects had specific products but ceased operations for various reasons, and this list can reflect the development status of the crypto industry to some extent.
From the perspective of sectors, DeFi, CeFi, and NFT have the highest proportion of dead projects, accounting for 42%, 16%, and 13% respectively.
At the same time, among these projects, 28 had received funding, with a total funding amount reaching $3.605 billion, primarily contributed by projects like FTX, Voyager Digital, Celsius Network, BlockFi, and FTX US. From the perspective of investment institutions, Alameda Research, Galaxy Digital, Arrington Capital, Paradigm, X21 Digital, Pantera Capital, and Coinbase Ventures all had three or more invested projects that ceased operations.
The vast majority of crypto projects died due to the impact of the collapses of Terra and FTX. Projects that ceased operations solely due to the Terra collapse include Anchor Protocol, Mirror Protocol, Proteus Finance, LoTerra, Nebula, Steak, Alice, Terra Name Service, and Terranova.
Additionally, several projects announced they would cease operations due to market demand, internal governance, and funding issues, including Babylon Finance, Porta Network, Rentable, Skynet Labs, mistX, PandaDAO, and Magnety.
These bloody cases deserve deep reflection from the industry. How should startup crypto projects be vigilant against the ubiquitous risks and formulate corresponding risk management strategies? This article will review these crypto projects that died in 2022.
CeFi
The cryptocurrency exchange FTX stopped processing user withdrawals on November 9 and subsequently entered bankruptcy proceedings. On December 13, FTX founder SBF was arrested in Panama and will be extradited back to the U.S. to face multiple charges. According to Chainalysis statistics, the FTX collapse caused a loss of $9 billion. Affected users of FTX may need to wait until the bankruptcy restructuring is completed to receive partial compensation. About 130 subsidiaries of the FTX group also filed for bankruptcy, including its independent U.S. platform FTX.US.
Alameda Research was founded by Sam Bankman-Fried in 2017 to take advantage of cryptocurrency arbitrage opportunities. He later hired Caroline Ellison in 2018 and Sam Trabucco as co-CEO of Alameda Research a year later. Trabucco resigned on August 25 but continued to serve as an advisor. SBF tweeted on November 10 that the company was ending operations. Caroline Ellison admitted to seven charges after the collapse of Alameda Research, with a maximum sentence of 110 years, and stated she would cooperate with prosecutors against SBF.
Crypto asset management service BlockFi filed for bankruptcy on November 28. According to documents submitted to the U.S. bankruptcy court, the top ten creditors were owed nearly $1.2 billion. In July, the company suffered losses from loans provided to the bankrupt crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital and subsequently received a bailout from FTX. However, FTX's collapse prompted BlockFi to suspend loans and customer withdrawals. At the time of filing for bankruptcy, BlockFi had $257 million in cash, which would be used to continue certain operations during the bankruptcy process.
The cryptocurrency lending platform Celsius Network entered bankruptcy proceedings on July 14. The platform had been promoting its nearly 19% annual return products to users, attracting 1.7 million users over four years and managing $30 billion in assets at its peak.
Crypto asset broker Voyager Digital filed for bankruptcy on July 5. The platform not only provided cryptocurrency trading services for retail customers but also attracted crypto holders to deposit assets with interest rates of up to 12%, then lent them out. Voyager suffered losses of up to $600 million due to Three Arrows Capital. According to Voyager's estimates, they had over 100,000 creditors, with liabilities between $1 billion and $10 billion. Ultimately, Binance.US bid approximately $1.022 billion to acquire its business.
The German cryptocurrency trading platform Nuri filed for bankruptcy on August 10 due to the crypto market sell-off and the collapse of Celsius. The platform claimed that the bankruptcy proceedings would not affect users' funds, and its trading services ended on November 30, with users required to withdraw all assets by December 18.
Blocknom, a crypto yield platform aimed at Southeast Asia, provides users with a secure way to manage their finances. It partnered with crypto infrastructure company Fireblocks to offer users stable, high-yield interest rates of up to 13% annually.
The virtual asset trading platform Coinsuper has been reported by multiple users since January as unable to withdraw funds, and its official website is currently inaccessible. Coinsuper had previously received funding from institutions such as Pantera Capital, Qiming Venture Partners, and Matrix Partners.
The digital asset OTC trading center Genesis Block suspended trading on November 18 and closed its OTC trading website on December 10. Genesis Block's collapse was due to the impact of the FTX incident.
The Spanish cryptocurrency platform 2gether notified users on July 6 that it would close all user accounts due to a lack of resources.
The cryptocurrency exchange Bitfront stopped new user registrations on November 28 and gradually ceased operations of its financial products in December. User withdrawals will end on March 31, 2023, Beijing time. Bitfront explained that this measure was taken in the best interest of the LINE blockchain ecosystem and was unrelated to recent allegations of misconduct against certain exchanges.
ZeFi allows users to deposit cash converted into USDC/USDT and lend it to borrowers who use digital assets like BTC and ETH as collateral to earn interest, with an annual APY of up to 10%. ZeFi has suspended new user registrations and halted all yield services.
DeFi
On August 31, Babylon founder Ramon Recuero announced that operations would officially cease in mid-November, primarily due to irreparable losses suffered from a hacker attack on the Rari/FEI lending pool in April of this year. After the announcement, users were unable to create new investment strategies or investment groups. Liquidation of the remaining assets in the treasury began on September 6, and the assets were distributed to BABL and hBABL holders. For more details, see "Babylon Finance Founder: Why We Chose to Shut Down and the Lessons I Learned."
Serum is a decentralized exchange built on Solana. Earlier this year, the Serum community foundation completed a $75 million token financing at a 15% market discount, with participation from Tiger Global and others. The project ceased operations due to the impact of the FTX incident. Subsequently, Serum developers planned to fork to create a new protocol not controlled by FTX's private keys.
Anchor Protocol
Anchor is a decentralized money market built on Terra, providing UST (Terra's dollar-pegged stablecoin) depositors with a stable 20% annual yield (APY). Borrowers can use Terra's native token LUNA (bLUNA) as collateral for UST loans. The protocol earns returns for depositors by collateralizing borrowers' LUNA. The project ceased operations due to the collapse of Terra.
Mirror Protocol
The decentralized synthetic asset protocol Mirror Protocol allows users to create and trade synthetic assets. The project ceased operations due to the collapse of Terra.
The DeFi hedge fund ForceDAO announced on March 6 that the protocol would officially cease operations after failing to recover from a vulnerability exploit, advising users to withdraw all remaining funds. Previously, in April 2021, a vulnerability in the ForceDAO contract was exploited, leading to a massive increase in token issuance.
The DeFi trading tokenization protocol Beaker Finance is a smart contract used to pool assets for executing specific smart contract trades and sharing ownership of the assets held by Beaker after the trade is executed.
Cryptolocally is a decentralized P2P crypto trading platform that was previously funded by IOSG Ventures.
The decentralized exchange mistX, which uses Flashbots technology, closed its services at the end of June due to the incubator Alchemist's decision to terminate the mistX incubation agreement. The functionality of mistX became redundant after the widespread use of EIP-1559.
KAKI is a decentralized options protocol built on Arbitrum and BNB Chain, focusing on DeFi while using Game as a facade, aiming to create an options DEX for retail users.
Swim Protocol
The multi-chain liquidity solution Swim Protocol announced on November 8 that it would close on May 1, 2023, due to external factors and Swim's internal trajectory and traction. Users can remove their liquidity, and the smart contracts will remain indefinitely available after the protocol closes.
Ardana
Ardana tweeted on November 24 that it would stop developing dUSD due to uncertainty in funding and project timelines. Ardana will continue to open-source its code, and remaining funds and treasury balances will be held by Ardana Labs. When a capable development team emerges in the community, Ardana will continue its work.
Arco Protocol
The decentralized lending platform Arco Protocol in the Aptos ecosystem announced the cessation of operations after its IDO failed on October 29, with partners like Wormhole and Celer Network announcing the termination of cooperation. The protocol then voted to let users decide whether to refund.
Qubit
The decentralized money market platform Qubit was hacked on January 28, losing 206,809 BNB, worth over $80 million at the time.
The BNB Chain ecosystem yield aggregator Blur Finance deleted its Twitter feed and Discord channel on August 11, with the team taking over $600,000, and the BLR token plummeting by 99%.
Level01
Level01 is a DeFi platform providing AI-guided derivatives trading services in financial, commodity, and digital asset markets.
The cryptocurrency derivatives trading platform Bexplus announced on July 18 that it would cease operations, allowing users to withdraw 100% of their assets.
The crypto yield platform Freeway offers annual rewards of up to 43% for "Supercharger" users priced in cryptocurrencies and fiat. The platform announced on October 24 that it would cease operations, involving assets exceeding $100 million. Two days later, the platform stated that the reason for ceasing operations was unprecedented dollar appreciation and cryptocurrency volatility, and it attempted to implement multiple recovery plans.
The yield aggregation protocol Starstream on Metis was hacked on April 8 due to a vulnerability in its distributor treasury contract, resulting in the theft of over 500 million STARS. The attacker then collateralized the STARS in the lending protocol Agora DeFi and borrowed USDC, METIS, and other assets, causing Agora DeFi to incur losses of approximately $8.2 million.
Proteus Finance is a yield farming aggregator based on the Terra Classic network, using AI algorithms to maximize returns through automated portfolio allocation and providing automated DeFi strategies.
Aleph Finance
The hybrid passive income protocol Aleph Finance in the Avalanche ecosystem announced its dissolution on June 21, primarily due to a poor market environment, mismanagement of the node niche by Strongblock, and public sentiment towards locked and staking products.
The decentralized lending platform Mensa Protocol based on the Fantom chain aims to provide a decentralized and secure market for platform users to obtain loans and earn interest.
LoTerra is an automatically executed smart contract based on the Terra Classic network. The team announced on May 15 that they would prepare a statement due to the impact of the Terra collapse, but there has been no further news.
The crypto income treasury Mushrooms Finance issued a farewell statement on May 17, stating that the website would be inaccessible in June, and the remaining treasury funds would be converted to USDC on the Polygon network and distributed proportionally to token holders. Users were urged to withdraw their assets as soon as possible.
Scranton.Finance is a community and relationship-focused yield farm on the Fantom network.
The multi-chain platform Gaj Finance announced on November 25 that it would no longer provide further service support due to risks in the underlying DeFi protocol.
Nebula is a passive asset management protocol based on Terra, which prepared for a restart snapshot at block 7780000 on May 25.
KSwap is an AMM-based token exchange protocol in the OKExChain ecosystem.
The automated market-making DEX project Levin announced that "levinswap.org" would no longer be valid starting January 4, 2023. However, the smart contracts will remain valid and secure after that date.
Parrot DeFi
Parrot DeFi is a decentralized yield farming and NFTs multi-chain platform currently supporting Arbitrum, Harmony, Polygon, and IoTeX networks.
The cross-chain leveraged yield farming protocol Bagels Finance faced issues due to node downtime last year. The protocol launched V1 on January 18, allowing users to establish solutions, and users unable to close positions need to contact community administrators.
The asset management protocol Magnety based on StarkNet announced the suspension of operations on September 11. The official explanation was that on-chain asset management is very complex and involves many legal issues, requiring substantial legal fees. Magnety has refunded all investors, and the code has been made public.
Steak is a liquidity staking protocol on the Terra network.
Goblin FTM is a DeFi yield mining protocol on Fantom.
The BTC yield aggregator ACoconut announced on January 3 that it would launch version 3, but there has been no news since then. Its versions 1 and 2 have seen their TVL drop to 0.
1Swap is a stablecoin exchange protocol based on Moonriver, and its official website and Twitter have ceased operations.
NFT
The cross-chain NFT platform Unifty announced on March 18 that it had been acquired, and the new team is drafting a new white paper and updated tokenomics. 1 million Unifty team tokens and 350,000 liquidity incentive tokens have been burned.
The multi-platform metaverse The Kingdom provides users with various digital experiences such as stores, housing, and public buildings.
The NFT marketplace Eternal for trading Twitch streaming clips announced on October 3 that it would cease operations due to strategic errors and slow decision-making, as well as various external adverse factors in the NFT and gaming communities, preventing the platform from finding market-fit products.
The NFT rental protocol Rentable allows any dApp to provide rental services to its users without integration. Its official website and Twitter have ceased operations. For specific reasons for its demise, see "Founder's Account of the Three Major 'Lessons Learned' from the Closure of NFT Rental Protocol Rentable."
SudoRare
SudoRare is an NFT platform forked from SudoSwap. The project deleted its website and Twitter on August 23, absconding with 519 ET, worth approximately $810,000 at the time.
NeoNexus
The metaverse project NeoNexus in the Solana ecosystem announced on Twitter on March 22 that the team would no longer develop the project and hoped to hand it over to community development. The reason was the poor market conditions and a significant decline in the price of the SOL token. Additionally, NeoNexus was unable to raise enough new funding in the next round.
OmArt is an NFT platform based on an original oNFT and infinite scrolling auction model, and its official website has ceased operations.
Stratos is an NFT marketplace for discovering, collecting, and selling digital goods on Arbitrum, and its official website is no longer available.
Polygram is an NFT marketplace built on DeSo.
CherryTrader is an NFT liquidity solution, and its official website has ceased access.
Blin Metaverse is an NFT infrastructure in the BNB Chain ecosystem, simulating the reshaping of NFT infrastructure through IP, virtual social networks, NFT asset minting, rights confirmation, and value chain circulation.
Solvent is a platform providing index funds for NFTs on Solana. Any NFT holder wishing to gain liquidity from their NFTs can deposit their NFT assets into specific NFT collections to mint fungible tokens for specific NFT projects in exchange.
Beat Foundry aims to provide an alternative to traditional music distribution models using NFTs, allowing projects to be funded through NFTs instead of traditional record labels, which can bring more creative freedom.
Infrastructure
Novi (formerly Calibra) is a digital wallet testing project by internet giant Meta, aimed at providing wallet services for Meta's metaverse and other projects. Starting July 21, users could no longer recharge their accounts, and the project officially ceased operations on September 1.
The Substrate-based proof-of-stake blockchain Porta Network announced on March 26 that it would cease operations due to the project being hacked for about 600,000 USDT last November. Founder Shane was the only person controlling the company's funds and wallets, and he withdrew all liquidity from PancakeSwap, being accused of fraud.
Terra Name Service (TNS) is a name service based on the IBC chain, creating easy-to-remember names for Terra addresses.
Alice is a non-custodial wallet based on Terra, aiming to build a simple and user-friendly non-custodial wallet for everyday business, using UST for real payments in the broader Terra community.
Terranova is an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) project aimed at connecting the TerraUSD stablecoin ecosystem to Ethereum.
Raze Network is a privacy protocol compatible with EVM. It is built as a native privacy layer to provide end-to-end anonymity for the entire DeFi and Web3.0 stack. The project has received funding from institutions such as OKX Ventures, Signum Capital, and CMS Holdings.
Hypernet Labs is a tech company developing blockchain-based payment and identity solutions, and its Twitter account has ceased operations.
Symbiont is an enterprise blockchain platform designed to address real-world problems in financial services. Its developed Assembly™ is designed for institutions to issue, track, and manage financial instruments such as data, loans, and securities.
Games & Metaverse
Business Age of Empires is a P2E game built on the BSC platform. The project completed $3 million in financing in January.
Survival Game Online is a survival simulation game, and the official Telegram channel has ceased operations, with numerous users reporting fraudulent activities by the project.
I WORLD GAME is an NFT real-life role-playing game, and its official website has ceased operations.
KaraStar is a P2E game based on BNB Chain, where players can explore the core gameplay of the game and master skills suitable for themselves while collecting more and more resources. The game received investment from Kucoin Ventures last December.
Endless Battlefield is a military strategy and exploration sandbox virtual world based on the UE engine. The game received investment from institutions such as LD Capital and EVG.
NASH Metaverse is a decentralized metaverse set against a space sci-fi backdrop. The project received investment from Fundamental Labs and Fire Phoenix Capital.
DAO
PandaDAO is a decentralized data development organization aimed at developing more Web2 internet products and liberating more Web2 human resources. In less than a year since its launch, it developed programmable data reference platforms like Pansight and protocols for the mutual fragmentation of NFT collections against ERC20. In September 2022, the project announced its dissolution after a community vote due to governance structure issues and DAO management problems.
Spice DAO announced its dissolution on July 29 and plans to return ETH to Spice token holders. Spice DAO had previously raised 2,608 ETH through juicebox, valued at nearly $8.7 million at the time. In January of this year, Spice DAO successfully bid approximately $3.03 million for an unpublished manuscript of the film "Dune" directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky.
Reputation DAO aims to become the reputation layer of the open blockchain economy. The project is a recipient of Aave grants and has also received $4.74 million in investments from institutions like Framework Ventures. Currently, the Reputation DAO official website has ceased operations.
NinjaDAOs
NinjaDAOs is a platform connecting Axie scholars and managers, which received investment from Folius Ventures.
Others
Ethereum Gas Limit is a solution that helps reveal the best transfer limits (Gas Limit) for using the market. Currently, its official website shows that it has ceased operations, and all ETH staked during Genesis has been returned to Genesis participants, including Coinlist, which received the staked ETH from users.
Polystarter
Polystarter is a native launchpad built for Polygon ecosystem projects, with investors including Huobi Ventures.
Solstarter is an IDO platform on Solana that helps launchpad projects increase liquidity in a fair and decentralized manner. The project's investors include Gate Labs.
币乎 is a blockchain community platform in China. On March 21, 币乎 announced that it would cease operations entirely due to policy reasons.
The decentralized storage and hosting platform Skynet Labs announced on August 13 that it would shut down due to failure to secure new funding.
Risk warning
Risk warning
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