The real reason DeFi projects that survived 2022 crash are shutting down now

When DeFi dashboard Zapper announced this month that it would shut down after nearly seven years, it joined a growing list of decentralized finance projects that have folded in 2026. Bitcoin DeFi platform Botanix, Solana portfolio tracker Step Finance, DeFi analytics platform Parsec and DEX aggregator Odos Protocol also wound down or are winding down this year after multiple market cycles.The carnage isn’t limited to DeFi — RootData has tracked 101 “dead” crypto projects in total this year as of July 26 — but it accounts for more than half the cadavers.Is it simply a case of bear market blues, or is there more to it than meets the eye? Botanix’s founders pointed to weak demand when announcing the platform’s closure, and told Cointelegraph in June that onchain activity consolidating around a few venues like Hyperliquid and big centralized exchanges hastened Botanix’s decline.While complaints the overall industry is consolidating into a fewer, larger venues are common, Artemis Research’s Alex Weseley tells Magazine that’s not the case in DeFi:“The prevailing narrative has been that concentration is increasing in DeFi, caused by a series of exploits and capital rotation into the most ...