POAP Shuts Down: Crypto Industry Faces Widespread Project Closures

The cryptocurrency industry has recently entered a period of intense farewells.

From BitMEX, which operated for 11 years and once defined cryptocurrency perpetual contracts trading, to Satori Finance, which received investments from top-tier institutions such as Polychain and Coinbase Ventures, one familiar name after another has ceased operations, officially coming to an end across platforms, DeFi, wallets, NFTs, infrastructure, and more.

Among these, POAP's departure is undoubtedly particularly poignant.

If you went through the previous crypto cycle and attended events like Devcon, ETHDenver, hackathons, DAO community gatherings, or various online and offline meetups, chances are your wallet contains a few POAPs—possibly from a conference, an online talk, or even a community event whose details you can barely remember anymore.

Most of these POAPs aren't worth much money, but precisely because of that, they may be closer to the original meaning of "collecting" than many NFTs that were once expensive.

It is precisely for this reason that POAP's farewell is especially representative.

It didn't suddenly drop to zero due to a hack, nor did an anonymous team vanish with the funds, and it didn't even issue a native token requiring constant price expectations to be maintained—yet, despite having real users, clear use cases, and strong brand recognition, it ultimately failed to find a business model capable of sustaining the company long-term.

This is exactly the change taking place in the crypto industry today.

In the past, we were more accustomed to discussing how a project came into being; moving forward, we may need to become increasingly accustomed to discussing how a project dies.

And this may not necessarily be a bad thing. But as ordinary users, we need to know how to avoid being affected by the aftershocks of a bear market.

In the last cycle of crypto industry expansion, it wasn't difficult for a project to prove it was legitimate.

With funding completed, mainnet launch, token issuance/airdrop, and a round of liquidity incentives, it’s enough to attract the first wave of users—TVL, number of addresses, and trading volume will quickly grow, and for a considerable time, whether a project generates revenue isn’t the most urgent concern.

But when the cycle reverses and the token price and liquidity can no longer sustain the funding function, this model reveals its most fundamental question: without new money coming in, can the project sustain itself?

The real point of interest here is the wave of project closures in 2026.

Many of the vanished projects were not air projects that never had products to begin with; rather, they had already raised funds, launched, acquired real users, and even operated smoothly from a technical standpoint.

For example, on July 23, BitMEX announced that it will officially shut down its trading platform on September 23, 2026.

Founded in 2014, this trading platform was once one of the most representative companies in the cryptocurrency derivatives market, with perpetual contracts, 100x leverage, and an entire suite of trading products later adopted industry-wide all closely tied to BitMEX’s early development.

It even specifically emphasized in its official shutdown announcement that, “Over more than 11 years of operation, BitMEX has never suffered user fund losses due to hacking,” but this did not make it an infrastructure capable of permanent operation.

Similar stories have also occurred in the DeFi and infrastructure sectors.

Botanix, a Bitcoin L2 project built over nearly four years, has maintained 100% uptime and zero security incidents since its mainnet launch, according to its own disclosed data. It has processed approximately 25 million transactions, supported 200,000 wallet addresses, and handled tens of millions of dollars in assets, while integrating with infrastructure and DeFi products such as Chainlink and Morpho.

Looking only at traditional crypto KPIs, it’s hard to even call it a “failed” project—the chain was built, the product was usable, users came, and funds flowed in, not insignificantly. Yet Botanix ultimately decided to shut down the network, acknowledging that real transaction demand was insufficient to generate enough fee revenue to cover the long-term infrastructure costs of running an independent chain.

Ultimately, Crypto has long relied on TVL, number of addresses, and transaction volume to measure an ecosystem, but rarely asked the final question: How much real income have these users actually generated?

As the industry enters a more mature phase, projects lacking real utility, long-term revenue, and facing ongoing maintenance costs are gradually exiting — this is more like a structural cleanup than a sudden loss of value across the entire industry.

In fact, a project that, after confirming it can no longer continue, proactively halts new operations, publishes a timeline, and provides users with a window to migrate their assets is often more responsible than one that continues to pretend it is operational while losing development capacity.

This also raises a question that is easily overlooked.

In the crypto industry, there's a long-standing security principle: "Not your keys, not your coins," leading many to naturally assume that as long as their assets are in a wallet they control, they've solved the most critical security issue.

This statement is certainly correct, but it only addresses half the issue, because self-custody of private keys solves account control but does not automatically guarantee that assets remain redeemable and withdrawable at all times.

The reason is simple: the "assets" displayed in your wallet may represent completely different things behind the scenes. For example, your wallet might show $10,000 worth of assets:

• One is native ETH on Ethereum;
• One is a deposit receipt from a lending protocol;
• One is an LP Token;
• One type is BTC-mapped assets minted via a cross-chain bridge;

They are also displayed in the wallet and require the user’s own private key signature to transfer, but the outcome may be entirely different if the underlying protocol or network ceases to operate.

Case 1: The project has ceased services, but users can still withdraw from the contract.

The shutdown of dYdX v3 is a relatively ideal example.

In 2024, dYdX decided to shut down v3 and shift its development focus to the new dYdX Chain. Subsequently, dYdX requested users to close their positions and withdraw USDC in advance. After the product was discontinued, the related contracts were frozen but still retained an exit mechanism for users who had not yet withdrawn their funds.

This case illustrates a near-perfect example of a "walkaway test"—the team can stop offering the product, but users' right to withdraw funds does not fully depend on the team continuing operations.

This is also a practical standard for measuring how truly non-custodial a DeFi protocol is: can ordinary users still withdraw their funds using on-chain contracts even if the development team stops maintaining the product? (Further reading: Ten Years of Debate: Could Ethereum Finally End the “Impossible Trinity” Debate?)

Second: The coin is indeed in your wallet, but it is merely a "token" representing another asset.

The story of Ren Protocol, on the other hand, illustrates the other side.

Those who participated in the previous DeFi cycle are likely familiar with it—Ren was once a crucial cross-chain infrastructure for BTC. When users transferred BTC to Ethereum via Ren, they received the wrapped token renBTC, which could then be used as collateral in Ethereum DeFi protocols to earn interest, borrow, and more.

Theoretically, renBTC can be stored in your own wallet, with users holding their private keys, and the blockchain indeed records this renBTC.

However, the issue is that renBTC is not BTC on the Bitcoin network itself; it represents a claim to the BTC underlying the Ren cross-chain system.

Therefore, following the collapse of Alameda Research in 2022, which caused Ren to lose critical financial support, the Ren 1.0 network began to be shut down. Subsequently, projects including BadgerDAO urgently advised users to exit their renBTC exposure, as once Ren 1.0 ceased operations, renBTC holders would no longer be able to redeem their assets back to Bitcoin mainnet BTC via the original bridge system.

In other words, although you still have renBTC in your wallet, others cannot destroy or transfer it away; however, you cannot, on your own with just your private key, get the now-defunct Ren network to cross-chain swap it back for real BTC.

The same logic applies to a large number of cross-chain assets, wrapped assets, LP tokens, lending tokens, and certain staking derivatives.

Users control this "token," but whether the token can ultimately be redeemed for the underlying asset depends on whether the underlying smart contract, reserve assets, oracle, cross-chain validators, liquidity, and redemption system are still functioning properly.

Third: If the underlying network is shut down, even the private key cannot keep a blockchain producing blocks.

At the next level, the question becomes even more direct.

Some blockchains may be shut down or effectively abandoned (making it difficult to ensure stable block production), such as Eclipse and AO, which I have personally experienced. If the entire network ceases operation, users can still retain their private keys and records proving their token holdings in historical blocks, but they may no longer be able to send assets as freely as before.

So, if we break down "asset control" more comprehensively, it actually encompasses at least three levels:

• The first layer is account control: who holds the private key and mnemonic phrase;
• The second layer is asset claim: whether the assets held in the wallet are native assets or tokens issued by a protocol, cross-chain bridge, custodian, or asset pool;
• The third layer is the right to exit: when a user truly decides to leave, does the underlying network, smart contracts, liquidity, and necessary infrastructure still allow the asset to be redeemed and migrated;

"Not your keys, not your coins" primarily addresses the first layer.

And when a project begins to decline, stops maintenance, or even shuts down, the real problems often arise in the last two layers—which is why, in the face of an ongoing industry-wide structural cleanup, what we should focus on most is: if this project stops operating tomorrow, can I still withdraw my assets intact today?

In fact, most projects do not suddenly jump from “completely normal” to “completely dead” on a single day.

A true recession typically lasts for a long time.

A relatively practical way to evaluate is to not focus solely on the token, but also consider the team, funding, code, and exit pathways.

• First, look at the money—especially whether there is genuine demand after removing liquidity incentive subsidies. After all, higher TVL doesn’t automatically mean greater security, and more transaction volume doesn’t necessarily mean more value. What matters is how many users continue using the protocol once token rewards are removed, and whether protocol revenue can cover team sustainability and other costs.
• Look at the team—especially whether the project is only still active on social media. Many projects won’t officially announce that development has stopped (as mentioned earlier, many officially announced projects already show a degree of integrity). More commonly, you’ll find that GitHub hasn’t seen core code updates in six months, critical bugs go unanswered for long periods, the roadmap is repeatedly delayed, and the community is left unmaintained.
• Finally, there’s exiting the channel—this is the step most users overlook, yet it may be the most valuable. For any significant on-chain asset, you should at least know which chain it’s on, what its contract address is, whether the wallet displays the native asset or a tokenized representation, how to redeem it back to the base asset, and whether there are alternative ways to interact if the official frontend goes down;

Therefore, as the industry begins to experience more structural consolidation, the concept of “self-custody” also needs to be understood more comprehensively: for foundational assets held long-term, keeping them in a wallet where you control the private key remains one of the most important security fundamentals.

But after participating in DeFi, cross-chain, staking, and other on-chain products, you need to ask one more question: Where exactly did my assets go?

Depositing ETH into a protocol and receiving a token in your wallet does not mean that ETH is still sitting at its original address; seeing a BTC L2 after bridging BTC does not mean you still hold actual BTC; seeing a balance after moving assets into an LP, Vault, or lending market does not guarantee you’ll be able to withdraw the exact same amount at the original value when you exit.

The departure of POAP has moved many long-time users because it reminds them that even in Web3, a product can exist without tokens, without a large financial game, and even be genuinely loved by many—yet still face shutdown.

This is not an anomaly in the blockchain world.

On the contrary, it may mean that the crypto industry is finally beginning to resemble a more normal industry, where products have lifecycles, teams change, failed business models exit, and limited developers, funding, and users continue to flow toward more efficient places.

In the coming years, such farewells are likely to occur again.

Some projects will leave on-chain memories of an era, like POAP; some protocols will shut down in an orderly manner, like dYdX v3, allowing users to exit through contracts; and some assets, like renBTC, will cause people to suddenly realize what they actually hold in their wallets only when the underlying infrastructure is about to be shut down.

Protocols will disappear, projects will fail, and even a blockchain may reach its end.

But the fundamental logic behind crypto asset security should not change: do not tie your ultimate control to the assumption that a project will operate forever.

Let’s strive together.