Lede
The cryptocurrency market experienced unprecedented levels of project attrition in 2025, with more than 11.6 million digital assets ceasing to function over the course of the year. This represents the highest number of failures ever recorded in a single calendar year for the industry. According to research findings released by CoinGecko analyst Shaun Paul Lee, the fourth quarter of 2025 was among the most difficult periods for the sector. During these final three months, approximately 7.7 million tokens listed on the GeckoTerminal platform ended active trading operations.
A primary catalyst for this massive wave of project collapses was a severe market crash on October 10. This event saw the liquidation of more than $19 billion in crypto leverage in just one day, creating a liquidity vacuum that many smaller projects could not survive. Analysts noted that the broader market turbulence throughout the year was particularly damaging to the memecoin sector, where token survivability plummeted. The sheer scale of these failures indicates a period of extreme instability that disproportionately affected newly launched and highly speculative projects.
Context
The historical data highlights a dramatic shift in the survival rate of cryptocurrency projects. In 2021, the market recorded only 2,584 failures, a figure that stood in sharp contrast to the 1.3 million projects that failed in 2024 and the 11.6 million in 2025. Between 2021 and 2023, project collapses represented just 3.4% of all cryptocurrency failures documented over the last five years. The rapid increase in failures is closely linked to the launch of new infrastructure designed to simplify token creation. Specifically, the Solana-based memecoin launchpad pump.fun, which debuted in January 2024, is cited as a major force behind the flood of new projects.
The ease of launching assets via these platforms led to a surge in low-effort projects entering the market. Before these launchpads became prevalent, failures typically numbered in the low six digits. However, the total number of tokens listed on GeckoTerminal grew from 3 million at the end of 2024 to 20 million by the end of 2025. This massive influx of tokens, many of which lacked long-term utility or developer commitment, contributed to the record-breaking attrition rates observed by the end of the year.
Impact
Despite the high failure rates seen throughout the year, the memecoin sector demonstrated significant volatility and growth in market capitalization during the transition into 2026. The market cap for these assets stood at $38 billion on December 29, but it surged to $47.7 billion by January 5. This rally was accompanied by an explosive jump in transaction volumes, which increased by 300% during the same period. Volumes rose from a base of $2.17 billion to a peak of $8.7 billion as speculative interest briefly intensified.
Following this peak, the market began to cool, with the total capitalization for memecoins retreating to approximately $43.7 billion as of Monday. These assets are frequently characterized as some of the riskiest bets in the crypto ecosystem, and their erratic performance serves as an indicator of broader investor risk appetite. Even as millions of projects failed and ceased trading, the surviving assets continued to facilitate billions of dollars in daily activity, highlighting a market that remains defined by extreme fluctuations in both liquidity and valuation.
Outlook
As the market moves forward, the focus remains on whether the high rate of token attrition will persist or stabilize. On Monday, memecoin transaction volumes were recorded at roughly $3.69 billion. While this is lower than the early January peaks, the metric registered a significant daily gain of more than 34%. This indicates that while millions of projects have vanished, trading activity among the remaining tokens remains robust. The market is currently navigating a landscape where the initial surge of low-effort projects has met with harsh reality, leading to a massive cleansing of the token lists.
The continued influence of memecoin launchpads remains a critical factor for the future. With 20 million tokens now in existence as of the end of 2025, the industry faces a saturated environment where only a small fraction of projects manage to maintain active trading status. Analysts suggest that the turbulence seen last year, which decimated so many projects, may continue to shape how new assets are launched and traded. The ongoing volume gains despite the recent “cooling” period suggest that speculative interest has not disappeared, even as the barrier to entry for creating new tokens remains historically low.
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