A significant portion of projects in a16z's crypto portfolio have been marked as shut down or sold
According to investment databases and English media, a significant portion of the projects in Andreessen Horowitz's crypto portfolio have been marked as shut down or sold. Meanwhile, the perpetual contract chain Hyperliquid, which has no traditional venture capital investment, has a fully diluted valuation approaching around $90 billion, with a circulating market cap of approximately $22 billion to $24 billion.
According to RootData, Coinbase Ventures, YZi Labs, Pantera, a16z, and Paradigm collectively have about 993 independent projects, of which approximately 216 are shut down, accounting for about 21.75%. Of the approximately 214 projects a16z invested in, about 43 are shut down, roughly 20.09%, with around 29 out of 148 lead investments being shut down. Pantera has an even higher shutdown rate of about 24.76%. In the first half of 2026, there have already been over sixty clear shutdown cases across the industry, with ten of them raising over $10 million.
The visible shutdown list covers multiple old narratives: Linera, a microchain Layer 1; MyPrize, a GambleFi project; Legend, a mobile DeFi project; Kiosk, a Farcaster client; Yupp, an AI on-chain incentive; Sound.xyz, a music NFT platform; Syndicate, a DAO tool; Entropy, a decentralized custody solution; and a batch of NFT games, social, and application chains. Acquisitions include avatar platform Ready Player Me, analytics company smlXL, writing platform Mirror, and virtual sneaker company RTFKT.
In terms of amounts, Yupp, Syndicate, and Entropy together burned about $87 million: Yupp raised about $33 million in a seed round led by Chris Dixon, claiming 1.3 million users but still lacking a model; Syndicate raised over $27 million during the 2021 DAO boom but found the market size far smaller than expected; Entropy, after about $26 million, underwent multiple unsuccessful transformations. Linera, founded by a former Meta researcher, raised about $12 million over two rounds, with a16z leading the seed; the community round aimed for $1.5 million but only raised about $848,000, and after a failed emergency financing, announced immediate shutdown on September 19 in Discord.
Hyperliquid, developed by Jeff Yan and others, is an order book public chain set to launch an airdrop in November 2024, with no traditional VC rounds. HYPE recently reached a new high of about $95 to $97, with a circulating supply of about 220 million to 250 million tokens, a maximum supply of nearly 1 billion tokens, and a fully diluted valuation of about $90 billion to $93 billion, with annual revenue publicly estimated at around $600 million. In contrast, many narrative projects in the venture capital portfolio from 2021 to 2023 are being liquidated in 2026.
The market mechanism is narrative liquidation against product fees. The sellers are crypto funds that still account according to rounds, while the buyers are on-chain users who price tokens using transaction fees and buybacks. The event is driven by the simultaneous spread of Linera's shutdown and portfolio visualization. Beneficiaries are exchanges and public chains that can self-finance with real trading volumes, while those under pressure are application layers that treat branding as proof of survival but cannot pass the next round. Funds are flowing from the sunk costs of fund portfolios to perpetual contract markets with daily active orders.
Source: Public information
ABAB AI Insight
a16z crypto's historical actions have been to transplant Silicon Valley's multi-round financing model into the token cycle: first pricing Layer 1, NFTs, DAOs, social, and application chains with branding, then waiting for tokens or acquisitions to exit. This template was effective from 2021 to 2022 because the secondary market was willing to pay for narratives. By 2026, the template has failed, not because the brand suddenly deteriorated, but because the secondary market no longer gives life to 'microchains not yet on the mainnet' and 'incentive platforms with no revenue.' Linera still has $12 million in historical financing on the books but cannot pass the $1.5 million community threshold, indicating that pricing power has shifted from partner meetings to public subscription books.
The capital paths have diverged. The fund path is: raise dollars, invest in equity or token rights, and bet on the next round or TGE. Hyperliquid's path is: first create an on-chain order book that can extract fees, then use airdrops to turn users into shareholders, and use revenue for buybacks instead of roadshows. Money in the former is stuck in salaries and node incentives, while in the latter it is stuck in market making and destruction. The acquisitions of Ready Player Me, Mirror, and RTFKT indicate that exit windows still exist, but buyers want consolidatable assets, not another round of ecological stories.
This is analogous to the liquidation of ICOs in 2018, the deaths of public chains in 2022, and the conventional seed death rates in traditional venture capital portfolios. The difference is that crypto makes deaths publicly visible on the same investment map. Industry-wise, the application layer and long-tail infrastructure are being cleared, while trading infrastructure is concentrating. Hyperliquid is at a stage of defining public chains by trading volume, while a16z's portfolio is at a stage of recalibrating brand premiums by shutdown rates.
The structural change is the transfer of pricing power. Whoever can make users pay daily without leading investment news no longer needs a 20% shutdown buffer to prove 'this is early.' The mechanism is: venture capital sells survival probabilities, while exchanges sell liquidation speeds; when the latter's fully diluted valuation approaches the $100 billion imagination space, the shutdown list on the former's books becomes the discount rate itself.
ABAB News · Cognitive Laws
- Branding can increase valuation but cannot reduce shutdown rates.
- Without the next round, the community subscription book is harder than partner meetings.
- Networks that can extract fees do not need investment maps to prove they are still alive.