News linked to both this project and an event.
Odaily reports: Crypto researcher Stacy Muur has compiled a list of 82 digital asset projects and protocols said to have shut down in 2026, including Balancer, Radiant Capital, Neon EVM, Step Finance, and others, spanning DeFi, blockchain infrastructure, and Web3 gaming.The shutdowns were driven by declining revenue, exhausted funding, and security incidents. Earlier this year, Bitcoin's price briefly fell below $60,000, retreating from an all-time high of over $126,000 in October 2025, adding financial pressure on projects.When Ethereum Layer 2 network Blast announced its shutdown, it stated that the project had no "credible path to economic viability." Step Finance shut down following a major treasury exploit, while Radiant Capital announced the end of operations after failing to recover from a 2024 exploit.An August study by DeFiLlama showed that 100 crypto projects had announced shutdowns in 2026, 40 of which occurred in the preceding 90 days; the most common reason was product-market mismatch, followed by exhausted funding, insufficient revenue, and pivots to other products. The projects involved raised a combined total of approximately $1 billion and generated $250 million in cumulative fees, with 9 individual projects each raising over $50 million. (Cointelegraph)
: A security report for the first half of 2026 released by on-chain security platform Blockaid shows that the crypto industry suffered losses exceeding $1 billion during the period, with a record number of hacker incidents in six months. Blockaid tracked 212 security incidents, including a single attack on KelpDAO that resulted in a loss of $292 million. Ethereum and Solana were the networks with the largest amounts of stolen funds during the period, with losses of approximately $332 million and $326 million, respectively. Blockaid stated that the number of high-threshold attacks in the first half of 2026 was 3.4 times that of the entire year of 2025. Ethereum incidents were primarily driven by code vulnerabilities, with attack vectors including bridge and smart contract exploits, unauthorized access to privileged accounts, and market manipulation. Solana's losses increased significantly from approximately $127 million in 2025, with over 98% of losses stemming from key leaks, primarily involving incidents related to Drift Protocol and Step Finance.
According to Lookonchain, the Step Finance attacker, after 5 months of inactivity, sold all 261,933 SOL, worth $21.4 million. The funds were then bridged to Ethereum to purchase 12,128 ETH, which were subsequently deposited into Tornado Cash to launder the money.