Do you remember the madness of 2021?

That year, Bitcoin surged to $60,000, Ethereum kept hitting new highs, and even a random NFT avatar could sell for millions of dollars. The concept of the Metaverse made everyone feel like they were at the forefront of the internet revolution, and the total funding in the crypto space reached unprecedented heights. Major venture capital firms flocked in, fearing to miss the next thousandfold or even ten-thousandfold project. Back then, as long as a project name included the letters "Web3," raising hundreds of millions of dollars was as easy as playing.

Data speaks volumes. In 2021, the total funding for crypto technology startups reached $25.2 billion, more than seven times the $3.1 billion in 2020, a growth of 713%. The scene was incredibly hot, as one can imagine.

But four years later, when we look back at the more than 400 projects that received high funding, only a few are still thriving.

Most? The situations vary, but the endings are similar. Some projects announced shutdowns, some pivoted to other directions, some were drained by hackers and never recovered, some were hit by the fallout from FTX's collapse and never regained momentum, and many became zombie projects, lying there without even updates.

There are at least 67 representative cases of projects that have already shut down, gone to zero, or are basically ignored, with total funding exceeding $5 billion. Half of the invested money was just wasted.

How many entrepreneurs' dreams and investors' bets have been completely deflated over these four years? This is the reality of the crypto world—prosperity and decline often hinge on a single thought.