Recently, I started reviewing what happened to various DeFi projects during 2025, and honestly, it's quite concerning. Linear Finance, zkLend, Loopring, DELV, Kinto, and Minterest simply shut down operations. It wasn't something sudden, but rather the result of a perfect storm: plummeting utilization, evaporated token liquidity, some hacks along the way, and of course, the overall pressure from the crypto market.

What caught my attention the most was what Stacy Muur commented about this. Many DeFi protocols are barely surviving, generating minimal income. It's almost as if the sector is in a vegetative state.

If you look at projects that still exist but are in trouble, you see things like Ethervista, Wombat Exchange, Saros, Equalizer, Skate, SparkDEX, HoneySwap, and Moonwell. These are generating less than $3,000 in fees over the past 30 days. That's not even operational money; it's practically irrelevant. It reflects how tough the environment has become for many platforms in the crypto space.

The reality is that the DeFi ecosystem is going through a moment of natural selection. Projects without a clear value proposition or sufficient adoption simply can't sustain. It's tough, but probably necessary for the sector to mature.