More Than 100 Crypto Projects Have Folded in 2026

More than 100 crypto projects have either shuttered, filed for bankruptcy or gone dark for good so far this year, CoinDesk reported Sunday (Aug. 9), citing numbers from RootData. 

The pace is quickening, the report added, with four major companies announcing closures or filings in the space of a week late last month: BitMEX, BitMart, Movement Labs and Storj Labs. The trend covers every part of the industry, CoinDesk added, from exchanges to wallets to NFT markets to layer-1 blockchains.

According to CoinDesk, this is happening as ethereum’s layer-2 ecosystem has been shrinking after a surge three years ago, when new technological advances made it easier for companies to start their own chains. That also meant the number of general-purpose layer-2s mushroomed.

“There were way too many general-purpose layer twos, which frankly don’t make sense as a product, because there’s no reason to have many, many versions of the same thing,” Ben Fisch, CEO of Espresso Systems, told CoinDesk. “We’re in a consolidation phase for general-purpose layer twos, not layer twos broadly.”

Industry leaders contend the trend is a sign of an crypto-wide shift, not an issue that is unique to ethereum scaling networks.