The 2026 Crypto Industry Dead Projects List published by RootData revealed that 99 projects have terminated their activities in the cryptocurrency market since the beginning of the year. The database tracks startups that have officially closed down, filed for bankruptcy, or whose website is unavailable for a long period of time. The list shows that it remains one of the most difficult topics to survive in the digital asset ecosystem.
Closures spread to different areas
The list included Family, Ctrl and Leap, which offer wallet services, as well as many lesser-known startups. Among the centralized exchanges, BitMart, BitMEX and AscendEX were also registered. On the infrastructure and decentralized finance side, the presence of names such as Zapper, Stream Finance, Parsec, Loopring and Goldfinch indicated that current market conditions affect almost every area of the ecosystem.
This latest wave of closures, unlike previous cycles, was not limited to a single niche. RootData’s list included exchanges, lending protocols, NFT platforms, Layer 2 networks, wallets, artificial intelligence projects and developer tools. This table revealed that mergers and contractions in the sector are no longer specific to a particular sub-sector.
RootData includes companies and projects that have officially closed down, filed for bankruptcy, or whose website has been down for a long time.
The era of growth was followed by the era of selective capital
Although it may seem remarkable that 99 projects have been closed, thousands of protocols, applications and initiatives have been implemented in the crypto market in the last few years. The majority of them were founded in the 2024 to 2025 bull period, when venture capital was more readily available and token prices supported business models that did not yet produce stable income.
Conditions for many teams have changed as capital flows have become more selective. Projects now had to show real user growth and recurring revenue, rather than relying solely on token value growth or new investment rounds. Many startups failed to make this transition. The presence of well-known brands in the list stood out as one of the most striking aspects of the report.
Different types of closures in the same list
RootData collects structures that have been officially closed, filed for bankruptcy, or have actually become inactive due to long-term internet outages, in the same data set. However, the impact of these results is not the same for every project. There is a significant difference between an exchange going bankrupt and a protocol ceasing its operations after a community vote.
The bankruptcy of a stock exchange and the closure of a protocol after a community decision do not have the same result.
Every major expansion in cryptocurrency history has been followed by a similar period of contraction. Hundreds of initial coin offerings failed after 2018. After the 2022 bear market, centralized lending companies collapsed. As a result, the industry continued on its way with fewer, but generally stronger players.
