Half of Tokens Have Failed Over the Last Five Years
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The industry is seeing a surge in failures, with various challenges affecting many projects.
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A new analysis has shown that more than half of crypto tokens have become defunct over the last five years, with a notable decline in token viability recently.
Further Insights
50% of Crypto Tokens Have Failed
On Wednesday, CoinGecko released a report indicating that over 50% of the tokens tracked by its Decentralized Exchange (DEX) tool, GeckoTerminal, have ceased to exist in the past five years.
The research evaluated the total count of crypto tokens that were once active in the DEX tracker, each making at least one trade before going inactive.
Since 2021, nearly 7 million tokens have been recorded in the live tracker, with 3.7 million cryptocurrencies no longer being traded and thus classified as failed. Consequently, 52.7% of all observed crypto tokens have perished, with 86.5% of failures occurring from 2024 to early 2025.
The report states that 49.7% of all identified failures within the timeframe from July 2021 to March 2025 happened in the first quarter of this year. As of March 31, 1.8 million tokens ceased operation, marking the highest annual failure rate recorded.
In the year 2024 alone, around 1.4 million crypto initiatives failed, which constituted 37.7% of the total failures in the analyzed period. The proportion of failing projects has surged from 0.5% in 2021 to 25% during the first quarter of 2025.
Nonetheless, CoinGecko highlighted that 2024 also witnessed the highest volume of new launches, with over 3 million projects introduced in the crypto ecosystem. The total count of projects since 2021 has skyrocketed by approximately 1,550%, expanding from 428,383 listed projects on GeckoTerminal to nearly 7 million crypto endeavors.
Are Memecoins the Main Cause of Many Failures?
The dramatic spike in token launches was driven by the introduction of the Solana-based memecoin launchpad Pump.fun, which allowed for the easy creation of tokens. This platform resulted in a surge of meme-based coins and projects with minimal effort entering the marketplace.
In particular, the onset of this memecoin craze involved the introduction of numerous PolitiFi tokens, celebrity-themed tokens, and fraudulent tokens, many of which quickly reached market values in the hundreds of millions.
The report pointed out that prior to the launch of Pump.fun, crypto failures were barely crossing six digits, with just 12.6% of all dead tokens recorded between 2021 and 2023. By July 2024, most celebrity-themed memecoins had plummeted by over 90% since their initial launch, with many being essentially non-existent.
Further Insights
Amid Q1 market adjustments, the majority of cryptocurrencies have experienced significant drops in value, with even some of the most resilient tokens testing monthly and yearly lows.
This latest decline in token viability may correlate with market exhaustion and instability, which coincided with the introduction of the official TRUMP and MELANIA memecoins and the LIBRA token controversy.
“This notable decline in token viability may be associated with larger market disruptions, particularly following Donald Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, which coincided with a downturn across the cryptocurrency market,” the report stated.
Image by Unsplash.com, Chart from TradingView.com
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