In crypto, the spotlight moves fast. A token that dominated headlines in 2020 might be forgotten in 2025. But does disappearance from the top 10 mean irrelevance? Or can a protocol-native asset quietly evolve, weather the cycles, and reclaim its place?
The sheer number of token failures over the past five years shows just how brutal this industry can be — and how rare survivorship actually is.
Here’s how many projects have disappeared from the market each year:
☠️ 2021 - 2,584
☠️ 2022 - 213,075
☠️ 2023 - 245,049
☠️ 2024 - 1,382,010
☠️ 2025 - 1,821,549

The rise and retreat of many DeFi tokens has created a sort of digital graveyard. Yet, not every token buried under a price chart is truly dead. Some simply mature in silence. One of the clearest examples? $CRV

Launched in 2020 by Curve Finance, $CRV was born with a purpose far beyond speculative trading. As part of an AMM protocol designed to optimize stablecoin liquidity, CRV served functional roles:

• incentivizing liquidity provision,
• governance participation,
• boosting rewards,
• and redistributing platform fees.

This wasn’t just another meme asset — CRV was (and is) a utility token tightly embedded in the protocol’s mechanics. With a capped supply of 3.03B and a 355-year emission curve, the tokenomics were designed for endurance.
Still, the market isn’t always rational. After reaching an ATH of over $60 in 2020, CRV tumbled — trading at ~$0.66 today. Many assumed it had joined the pile of forgotten DeFi coins.

In a sea of flashy launches and rug pulls, longevity depends on more than branding or early hype. It depends on sustained use, meaningful integrations, and the ability to evolve.

For CRV, that’s exactly what’s been happening — quietly:
💫 Protocol upgrades have continued.
💫 Whale activity is rising again.
💫 The token recently saw 24h volume exceed $127M.
💫 Token continues to engage in strategic partnerships — for instance, by joining trader-oriented initiatives like the ICTC tournament.

There’s no viral spike here — just quiet persistence.

Many DeFi tokens from the last cycle have truly died — abandoned codebases, broken tokenomics, no community. But otherskeep operating under the radar.

According to recent data, over 50% of all cryptocurrencies launched since 2021 have already failed — with nearly 1.8 million of those failures occurring in just the first quarter of 2025 alone. The rapid rise and fall of meme tokens and low-effort projects (often generated via platforms like pump.fun) highlight how fragile most tokens are in today’s market.
These protocol-native assets may never return to bubble-era highs, but they don’t need to. Their relevance is measured in integration, not speculation.

As we look ahead, it’s worth asking: will the future of DeFi be built on flashy new tokens? Or on the mature infrastructure that proved it could survive crypto winter?