Original Author: Eric, ForesightNews

On the evening of November 17, 2025, DappRadar, which has accompanied the industry for nearly 8 years, announced that it will gradually shut down its services and will no longer continue to track blockchain and DApp data.

It is often said that "a grain of sand from the era falling on an individual is like a mountain," and this description fits DappRadar perfectly. Born during perhaps the loudest era of the "blockchain is dead" rhetoric, it has accompanied Web3 from its stumbling beginnings to its flourishing years, yet it ultimately could not survive the pains of transition. The departure of such a product, marked by the era, reminds me of what Nokia's CEO said at the end of a press conference after being acquired by Microsoft 11 years ago:

"We didn't do anything wrong, but somehow, we lost."

The data website we used together in those years

Many newcomers to the Web3 industry may not realize that DappRadar was once a very important and authoritative data source. In addition to being cited by outlets like CoinDesk and Chinese Web3 media, traditional mainstream Western media such as Bloomberg, Forbes, and BBC have also referenced DappRadar data multiple times.

It is considered authoritative because, before specialized data websites (such as Nansen, Arkham, DefiLlama, etc.) and professional Web3 marketing tools (such as Cyber, Kaito, etc.) became prevalent, DappRadar was almost the only portal that all DApps had to register on. The completeness of its project listings made its data unparalleled in integrity and credibility, becoming the best way to quickly understand the basic information of new projects at that time.

DappRadar's co-founder Skirmantas Januskas hails from Lithuania. Unlike many industry leaders who hold multiple positions, he has focused solely on DappRadar since February 2018. Prior to that, he briefly worked as a software developer at NFQ. Another co-founder, Dunica Dragos, was previously an operator at the American gaming giant EA and has also dedicated himself entirely to DappRadar since its founding.

DappRadar has received two rounds of investment. In the seed round of financing in September 2019, DappRadar secured $2.23 million from Naspers, Blockchain Ventures, and Angel Invest Berlin. Naspers is the South African multinational media group that invested $32 million in 2001 to acquire a 46.5% stake in Tencent from Li Ka-shing, IDG, and others. In the subsequent Series A round in May 2021, DappRadar received $4.94 million from Blockchain.com Ventures, Prosus Ventures, and Nordic Ninja VC.

I found a record of Skirmantas Januskas interviewed after completing the financing in 2019, during the darkest moment for Web3. However, Skirmantas was full of confidence in the industry, believing that as long as the issues of user experience and finding user needs were resolved, "decentralized applications would become a thing of the past."

In 2019, this passionate "youngster" expressed his insights on DeFi, gaming, and other sectors, which ultimately saw explosive growth in 2021. Although the majority of DeFi data was captured by DefiLlama, DappRadar's comprehensive data and deep exploration of emerging concepts like NFT, GameFi, and the metaverse allowed it to reach a user base in the millions at its peak. Some small projects that couldn't even be found on Twitter had their DAUs fluctuating between 0 and 3 on DappRadar.

Professionalism became the biggest original sin

If one had to summarize the biggest reason for DappRadar's failure, it would be its overly cryptonative approach that overlooked the importance of commercialization.

To this day, when you open DappRadar's homepage, you will find that the categories it displays include games, DeFi, NFTs, gambling, and newly added AI, RWA, and social, but there are no popular themes like memes. So why is Skirmantas called a "youngster"? Even in the NFT sector, which still insists on releasing a detailed report every quarter and continues to track obscure airdrops, it has almost missed all the hot topics.

In the past two years, DappRadar could be said to be the only platform covering all long-tail sectors and projects in Web3, but the problem is that it seems to focus only on the tail.

This kind of narrow professionalism can indeed provide high-quality material for reports by Bloomberg and Forbes, but it has no commercial value. The RADAR token launched after the 2021 financing, aside from subscription to Pro services, staking, and voting, seems to have no better application scenarios, effectively blocking the most valuable subscription revenue source.

The image established early on through comprehensiveness gradually became a shackle later. DappRadar's professionalism in DeFi does not match that of DefiLlama, its token information seems inferior to CMC, and its research depth does not reach the level of Bankless. The only sector it excelled in, NFTs, has become stagnant. However, I believe DappRadar itself recognized these issues earlier, which is why it accelerated its commercialization efforts, including providing quality data through APIs and offering advertising space.

After the 2021 financing, DappRadar managed to last for 4 years. Besides the financing itself, it likely generated some revenue through traffic monetization, but clearly, this revenue still fell short compared to the costs required to provide exponentially growing massive data. Additionally, since 2023, although the market has been on the rise, there are not many projects with sufficient budgets, and the limited budgets are more often spent on KOLs, exchanges, and some emerging platforms, leaving DappRadar, which has been washed ashore, increasingly strapped for resources.

As mentioned earlier, its coverage is too long-tail, and project parties may have no way to determine what kind of user profile would refer to DappRadar's information under what circumstances. In the primitive era, DappRadar provided a channel to understand new projects, but after the sands of time have settled, the channels to understand the few "quality projects" have become increasingly diverse, and the old guard is no longer the only best choice.

Compared to the simple website of two or three years ago, the current DappRadar is all-encompassing but appears chaotic. This reflects an overzealous commercialization effort, as indicated in the farewell letter's mention of "exhausting all possibilities." For DappRadar, without continuous funding and with limited financing money, it needs to show discernment in content and restraint in advertising on its website. DappRadar's excessive insistence on professionalism or "orthodoxy," along with its later realization of the misstep and the subsequent piling up of content and ads, has exposed its operational shortcomings.

In addition to its own shortcomings, the Web3 data and information platform is inherently a difficult business. Nowadays, with the explosion of multi-chain data, the costs of indexing and servers are rising, and the market has a high demand for quality data but lacks matching payment capabilities. Without other sources of income, relying solely on advertising and selling APIs will inevitably face competition. Platforms with low pricing power increase ad density to survive, leading to a decline that seems inevitable.

DappRadar's seven-year trajectory encapsulates the common commercialization challenges faced by such projects: high value, low payment, rigid costs, and rapid narrative iteration. Its shutdown leaves a clear lesson for future entrants: if the business model cannot be closed-loop from day one, even the most authoritative data cannot prevent "bleeding to death."

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