When POAP Reaches Its End: How Should Ordinary Users Navigate the Crypto Industry's Wave of Shutdowns?

The crypto industry seems to have entered a period of intense farewells recently.

From BitMEX, which operated for 11 years and once defined crypto perpetual contract trading, to Satori Finance, which received investments from top institutions like Polychain and Coinbase Ventures, one familiar name after another has ceased operations and officially reached its end, spanning trading platforms, DeFi, wallets, NFTs, infrastructure, and more.

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

If you experienced the last crypto cycle, especially if you attended Devcon, ETHDenver, hackathons, DAO community events, or various online and offline meetups, you probably have a few POAPs in your wallet. They might be from a conference, an online talk, or perhaps just a community event whose details you can barely recall.

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

It is also for this reason that POAP's farewell is particularly representative.

It didn't go to zero due to a hacker attack, nor did an anonymous team run away with the funds. It didn't even issue a native token that required constantly maintaining price expectations. It simply had real users, a clear use case, and strong brand recognition, but ultimately still failed to find a business model capable of sustaining the company in the long term.

This is precisely the change happening in the crypto industry today.

In the past, we were more accustomed to discussing how a project is born; next, we may need to get increasingly used to discussing how a project dies.

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

1. A New Wave of "Shutdowns" Sweeps Web3

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

Complete a funding round, launch the mainnet, issue tokens/airdrop, followed by a round of liquidity incentives – that was enough to attract the first batch of users. TVL, address counts, and trading volume would quickly grow. In fact, for a considerable period, whether a project even had revenue wasn't the most pressing issue.

But when the cycle reverses and token prices and liquidity can no longer serve their fundraising function, this model exposes a very simple problem: If no new money comes in, can this project support itself?

This is also where the real significance of the project shutdowns in this 2026 cycle lies.

Because many of those disappearing are not air projects that never had a product, but projects that have already raised funds, launched, have real users, and even operate technically well.

For instance, on July 23, BitMEX announced it would 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 entire crypto derivatives market. Perpetual contracts, 100x leverage, and a whole suite of trading products later widely adopted across the industry are all closely tied to BitMEX's early development.

It even specifically emphasized in its official shutdown announcement that "throughout over 11 years of operation, BitMEX has never caused user fund losses due to hacker attacks," but this didn't make it infrastructure that could run forever.

Similar stories have also unfolded in the DeFi and infrastructure tracks.

Botanix, a Bitcoin L2 project built over nearly four years, according to its own disclosed data, maintained 100% uptime and zero security incidents since its mainnet launch, processing approximately 25 million transactions, 200,000 wallet addresses, with tens of millions of dollars in assets entering the network, and integrating infrastructure and DeFi products like Chainlink and Morpho.

Looking only at traditional Crypto KPIs, it would hardly be called a "failed" project – the chain was built, the product was usable, users came, money flowed in, and quite a lot of it. But ultimately, Botanix decided to shut down the network, reviewing that real trading demand wasn't sufficient to generate enough fee revenue to cover the infrastructure costs required for an independent network to operate long-term.

At the end of the day, Crypto has been too accustomed to measuring an ecosystem by TVL, address counts, and transaction numbers, rarely asking that ultimate question: How much real revenue did these users actually create?

As the industry enters a more mature stage, projects lacking real usage, suffering from prolonged revenue droughts, and carrying persistent maintenance costs gradually exiting resembles more of a structural clearing than a sudden loss of value across the entire industry.

One could even say that when a project confirms it can no longer continue, proactively halting new business, publishing a timeline, and leaving users a window for asset migration is often more responsible than losing development capacity on one hand while pretending to still be operational on the other.

2. Under "Chronic Death," What Should Ordinary Users Watch Out For?

This also raises an easily overlooked issue.

The crypto industry has a long-circulated security principle: "Not your keys, not your coins." This leads many to naturally assume that as long as assets are in a wallet where they control the private keys, the core security problem is solved.

This statement is certainly not wrong, but it only solves half the problem because holding your own private keys addresses account control, but it doesn't automatically guarantee that the asset itself always maintains redeemability and exitability.

The reason is simple: the "assets" displayed in a wallet might be entirely different things underneath. For example, two wallets might both show assets worth $10,000:

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

They all appear in the wallet, and all require the user's own private key signature to transfer, but once the underlying protocol or even the base network ceases to operate, the outcomes can be completely different.

Scenario One: The Project Stops Services, But Users Can Still Exit via the Contract

The shutdown of dYdX v3 is a relatively ideal example.

In 2024, dYdX decided to wind down v3, shifting development focus to the new dYdX Chain. Subsequently, dYdX required users to close positions and withdraw USDC ahead of time. After the product ceased operation, the relevant contracts entered a frozen state but still retained exit mechanisms for users who hadn't yet withdrawn their funds to process their assets.

This case demonstrates a near-perfect example of a "walkaway test" – the team can stop providing the product, but users' right to withdraw funds doesn't rely entirely on the team continuing to operate.

This is also a realistic standard for measuring how "non-custodial" a DeFi protocol truly is: if the development team stops maintaining the product one day, can ordinary users rely on on-chain contracts to get their money out? (Further reading: "A Turning Point in a Decade-Long Debate: Could Ethereum End the 'Impossible Triangle' Debate?").

Scenario Two: The Coins Are Indeed in Your Wallet, But They're Just "Certificates" for Another Asset

The story of Ren Protocol showcases the other side.

Those who participated in the last DeFi cycle should be familiar with it. Ren was once a crucial BTC cross-chain infrastructure. Users would transfer BTC to Ethereum via Ren and receive the wrapped token renBTC, which could then be used as collateral for yield generation, lending, and other operations within Ethereum's DeFi protocols.

Theoretically, renBTC could sit in your own wallet, you hold the private keys, and the blockchain indeed records this renBTC.

But the problem is that renBTC itself is not BTC on the Bitcoin network; it represents a claim right to the BTC backing the Ren cross-chain system.

Therefore, in 2022, after Alameda Research collapsed and caused Ren to lose crucial financial support, the Ren 1.0 network began shutting down. Subsequently, projects including BadgerDAO urgently reminded users to exit their renBTC exposure because once Ren 1.0 stopped operating, renBTC holders would no longer be able to redeem their assets back to BTC on the Bitcoin mainnet through the original bridge system.

In other words, even though you still have renBTC in your wallet and no one else can destroy or transfer it away, you cannot, relying solely on your private key, make the defunct Ren network bridge your assets back to real BTC.

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

What users control is this "certificate." Whether the certificate can ultimately be redeemed for the underlying asset depends on whether the underlying smart contracts, reserve assets, oracles, cross-chain validators, liquidity, and redemption systems are still functioning normally.

Scenario Three: If the Underlying Network Itself Shuts Down, Private Keys Can't Keep a Chain Producing Blocks

Going one layer deeper, the problem becomes even more direct.

That is, some chains directly shut down or become nearly abandoned (struggling to ensure stable block production), like Eclipse, AO, etc., which I have personally experienced. If the entire network stops operating, users can still keep their private keys and the records in historical blocks proving how many tokens they owned, but they may not be able to freely send assets as before.

Therefore, if we break down "asset control" more comprehensively, it actually consists of at least three layers:

• The first layer is account control: who actually holds the private keys and mnemonic phrase;
• The second layer is asset claim rights: whether what's held in the wallet is a native asset or a certificate issued by a protocol, cross-chain bridge, custodian, or asset pool;
• The third layer is exit execution rights: when a user genuinely decides to leave, do the underlying network, smart contracts, liquidity, and necessary infrastructure still permit the asset to be redeemed and migrated;

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

And when a project begins to decline, stops being maintained, or even heads toward closure, what tends to go wrong is often precisely the latter two layers. This is why, facing an ongoing structural clearing in the industry, what we need to pay more attention to is: If this project ceases operations tomorrow, can I still fully take my assets away today?

3. Comprehensively and Accurately Understanding the Meaning of "Self-Custody"

In fact, most projects don't suddenly jump from "completely fine" to "completely dead" in a single day.

Real decline usually lasts a long time.

A relatively practical assessment method is to not just stare at the token, but also simultaneously look at people, money, code, and exit channels.

• First, look at the money, especially whether there's real demand after removing liquidity incentive subsidies. After all, higher TVL isn't necessarily safer, and more transaction volume isn't necessarily more valuable. The key is, after removing token rewards, how many people continue to use it, and can protocol revenue cover team survival and other costs?
• Next, look at the people, especially whether the project is only keeping its social media updated. Because many projects won't formally announce that no one is developing anymore (the aforementioned officially announced projects already count as having some ethics). The more common state is no core code updates on GitHub for six months, serious bugs going unanswered for long periods, roadmaps continually delayed, and communities unmaintained.
• Finally, consider the exit channel. This is the step ordinary users most easily overlook, yet it might be the most valuable. For any significant on-chain asset, you should at least know which chain it's on, what the contract address is, whether what's shown in the wallet is a native asset or a certificate, how to redeem it back to the most basic asset, and whether there are alternative interaction methods if the official frontend goes down.

Therefore, as the industry begins to experience more structural clearing, the concept of "self-custody" also needs to be understood more comprehensively. For long-held base assets, keeping them as much as possible in wallets where you control the private keys remains one of the most important security baselines.

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

Depositing ETH into a protocol and receiving a Token in your wallet doesn't mean that ETH is still sitting in its original address. Seeing a BTC L2 after bridging BTC doesn't mean you still hold the real BTC. Seeing a balance after moving assets into an LP, Vault, or lending market doesn't guarantee you can exit at the price shown on screen when you leave.

Final Thoughts

POAP's departure resonates with many veteran users because it reminds those still in Web3 that a product can have no token, no massive financial game, and be genuinely loved by many, yet still face a day when it ceases operations.

This is not an anomaly in the blockchain world.

On the contrary, it might mean the crypto industry is finally starting to look more like a normal industry. Products have lifecycles, teams change over, failed business models exit, and limited developers, capital, and users continue to flow toward more efficient places.

In the coming years, farewells like these will likely continue to happen.

Some projects will, like POAP, leave behind on-chain memories of an era; some protocols will, like dYdX v3, shut down in an orderly fashion, allowing users to continue exiting via contracts; and some assets will, like renBTC, make people realize only when the infrastructure is about to close what it is they've actually been holding in their wallets.

Protocols will disappear, projects will fail, and even a chain might reach its end.

But the most fundamental logic of crypto asset security should not change with it: don't tie your ultimate control to the idea that a particular project will operate forever.

Wishing you all the best.