Crypto Shakeout Sees Over 100 Projects Fold Amid Market Maturity

In what's being described as a 'massive dot-com style shakeout,' over 100 crypto projects have shut down, filed for bankruptcy or gone dark in 2026. The pace of these exits is accelerating, with four major firms announcing closures or filings within a single week in late July.

The affected projects span every layer of the industry, including exchanges, wallets, DeFi lending protocols, NFT marketplaces and layer-1 blockchains. One notable example is Moonbeam, an entire Polkadot parachain that shut down permanently on July 31, stranding users who hadn't bridged their assets off the chain in time.

Industry leaders argue that this shakeout reflects a broader shift across crypto rather than a problem unique to Ethereum scaling networks. They attribute the consolidation to a maturing market where capital is harder to raise and investors are becoming more selective.

A common factor among the protocols that have survived and even grown through the bear market is their ability to generate revenue in dollars, not in their own token. For example, Hyperliquid, a decentralized perpetuals exchange, crossed $1 billion in cumulative fees on June 30, less than two years after launch.