At least five entities operating within the cryptocurrency sector have announced the permanent closure of their operations during the third week of May 2026. The digital platforms Fantasy.top, Everclear, and ZERO Network formally communicated on Thursday, May 21, the termination of their services, attributing the decision to a lack of commercial adoption and the inability to sustain viable revenue streams.
— fantasy.top (@fantasy_top_) May 20, 2026
These corporate notices, confirmed through a social media statement by the operators of Fantasy.top, join the recent shutdowns of Syndicate Labs and Bitcoin Depot, configuring a week characterized by the liquidation of multiple entities in the ecosystem.
The general macroeconomic environment for digital assets has been subjected to sustained downward pressure throughout the current year. The industry has faced direct issues with venture capital funding and user retention following a 40% drop in Bitcoin from its historical peak of $126,000 registered in early October of the previous year.
This financial restriction, closely linked to a severe liquidation of crypto assets across exchange desks, caused various public companies to report negative balances during the first quarter. As a direct consequence of these market conditions, industry registries indicate that more than 5,000 corporate layoffs have been executed during the first five months of the annual cycle.
The specific case of the trading card platform Fantasy.top highlights the absence of product-market fit. The technical managers of the project detailed that the protocol will permanently suspend its functions in June, concluding two years of active operations.
— kipit | fan/acc (@0xKipit) May 20, 2026
According to the company’s records, the daily transactional volume registered within its platform was insufficient to finance long-term development activities. Although the treasury explored the integration of alternative tools such as prediction markets to attempt to maintain financial viability, none of the initiatives achieved commercial traction, according to a public declaration made by the digital protocol co-founder on Thursday.
Kipit, a direct representative of Fantasy.top, specified that the structural failure of the project originated from attempting to force a cryptocurrency-based architecture on top of a traditional gaming model that was not designed to integrate technological speculation. This incentive approach almost exclusively attracted operators focused on extracting rapid financial gains from the value of the cards, displacing organic users who were genuinely interested in the base mechanics of the game.
Infrastructure and retention challenges
For its part, the cross-blockchain infrastructure network Everclear communicated the formal dissolution of the Everclear Foundation and Everclear Labs. These two autonomous organizations, responsible for treasury management and protocol code development, determined that the system never reached the commercial depth necessary to maintain server and personnel payments.
Today we’re sharing difficult news: we have made the decision to wind down Everclear (Foundation / Labs and building the product).
— Everclear (@EverclearOrg) May 21, 2026
The administration published operational reasons specifying that, after failing in an acquisition attempt, they tried to pivot toward a model based exclusively on integration partnerships with third parties. However, the foundation’s operational funds ran out before the commercial partners could launch the integrations on the main network.
In parallel, the layer-2 network built on Ethereum, ZERO Network, executed its own closure on Thursday, May 21, to redirect all its human and financial capital toward Zerion, its sister crypto wallet and data indexing service.
1/ We're winding down ZERϴ Network. Here’s a personal note from the team:
— ZERϴ Network (@zerodotnetwork) May 21, 2026
Evgeny Yurtaev, CEO and co-founder of Zerion, explained through an official team declaration that the original project was built on the thesis of completely eliminating on-chain transaction fees for retail users. After reviewing the network’s adoption metrics, Yurtaev concluded that the current industry infrastructure does not require the creation of new blockchain networks, but rather the development of simplified interfaces to access existing ones.
This week’s scenario of institutional paralysis also includes the liquidation of the decentralized infrastructure firm Syndicate Labs. This company interrupted all its contracts and services after five years of active operations, citing an irreversible contraction in the demand for rollup technologies.
Simultaneously, on Monday, May 18, the crypto ATM operating company Bitcoin Depot filed a formal petition for bankruptcy protection in United States courts. In the legal document, the entity reported significant strains on its profit margins and an increase in costs due to compliance with local regulations, factors that restrict the expansion of the institutional derivatives environment and physical trading services.
The historical record of operational closures shows an uninterrupted accumulation of closed projects throughout this year. The mobile superapp Legend confirmed the end of its services on May 13. This list of dissolutions is joined by the Solana yield aggregator Step Finance, the liquidity protocol Seamless, the derivatives market Polynomial, and Balancer Labs, the main entity behind the Balancer protocol. The justifications for closure range from the loss of treasury funds due to vulnerabilities and security exploits to the inability to generate sufficient network fees to cover basic maintenance costs.
Prediction markets growth metrics
Despite the massive closure of infrastructure operators, specific subsectors of the industry sustain ascending commercial metrics. The Hyperliquid platform, focused on decentralized perpetual futures settlement, registered an increase in institutional demand that boosted the stock valuation of its native token, which surpassed 62 dollars during Thursday’s trading session, according to the audited records of CoinGecko. Simultaneously, prediction markets dependent on blockchain oracles, specifically Kalshi and Polymarket, reported a combined record monthly volume of 23.8 billion dollars during April’s settlements, supported by Token Terminal’s on-chain metrics reports.
The growth of prediction markets contrasts directly with the corporate financial performance of the oldest entities in the sector. Public companies with main exposure to infrastructure and asset custody, including firms such as Bullish, BitGo, Galaxy Digital, and Coinbase, formalized first-quarter operating losses in 2026.
Greg Cipolaro, head of research at NYDIG, determined in a February report that the number of protocols capable of receiving funding is shrinking to a strict niche, limited only to applications designed to transfer traditional finance products to blockchain networks. The total liquidation of Fantasy.top’s servers is scheduled to materialize in June, the date on which all commercial access interfaces to the protocol will be permanently disconnected.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.
