DeFi & NFT
By Bruce Buterin
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Fewer Fees, More Competition. The numbers from Artemis are worth sitting with. Back in 2025, roughly 33 to 34 DeFi applications…
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Where the Money Is Actually Going. Gauntlet, the DeFi risk management firm, isn't sounding the alarm.
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What Survival Looks Like Now. So what does it take to not be on RootData's failure list? Revenue, mostly.
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Zapper is shutting down. Nearly seven years after launch, one of DeFi's most recognizable dashboards is calling it quits — and it's far from alone in 2026.
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Botanix, Step Finance, Parsec, and Odos Protocol have all ceased operations this year. Per RootData, 101 crypto projects failed by July 26, and more than half of those were DeFi…
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Botanix was pretty direct about it. The team cited weak demand and growing concentration of on-chain activity around major exchanges — specifically pointing to Hyperliquid — as…
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The numbers from Artemis are worth sitting with. Back in 2025, roughly 33 to 34 DeFi applications were generating at least $1 million in monthly fees.
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That's the paradox. More protocols competing for space, but each one capturing a smaller slice.
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Markus Levin from XYO put it simply: competition is sharper now than in any previous cycle. And Wesley — the source doesn't give a last name — thinks the industry has been…
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Gauntlet, the DeFi risk management firm, isn't sounding the alarm. Nicholas Cannon said stablecoin supply is growing and that traditional finance is moving toward DeFi — not away…
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More context: F2Pools Chun Wang Moves 3,345 ETH Back to Binance After $221M DeFi Stint
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And the fundraising data backs that up. Morpho pulled in $175 million, with the goal of bringing institutional lending on-chain.
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Merlin Egalite of Morpho Labs said future success will depend on distribution and making DeFi infrastructure accessible to traditional financial institutions.
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That shift is real and it's probably accelerating. Teams that spent years trying to build the next Uniswap are now asking a different question: what can we build on top of Uniswap?
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So what does it take to not be on RootData's failure list? Revenue, mostly. A user base that shows up without token bribes.
The Currency Analytics
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