The veteran data site DappRadar announced its shutdown, marking another drop of tears in the era.

Original Title: “DappRadar, Another Tear of the Era”

Original author: Eric

Source:

Reprinted: Mars Finance

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

It is often said that “a grain of sand from the era falling on an individual is like a mountain,” which perfectly describes DappRadar. This product, born in perhaps the noisiest era of the “blockchain is dead” rhetoric, has accompanied Web3 from its stumbling beginnings to the age of dance, yet it still could not withstand the pains of a new era. The departure of products marked by the era reminds me of what the Nokia CEO said at the end of the press conference when it was acquired by Microsoft 11 years ago:

“We didn't do anything wrong, but for some reason, we lost.”

The data website we used together in those years.

Many newcomers to the Web3 industry may not be aware that DappRadar was once a very important and authoritative data source. In addition to being cited by sources such as CoinDesk and Chinese Web3 media, traditional mainstream media in Europe and America, including Bloomberg, Forbes, and BBC, have also cited DappRadar data multiple times.

The reason it is considered authoritative is that before specialized data websites (such as Nansen, Arkham, DefiLlama, etc.) and professional Web3 marketing tools (such as Cyber, Kaito, etc.) became widespread, DappRadar was almost the only portal that all DApps had to log into. The comprehensiveness of projects made its data completeness and credibility unmatched, almost becoming the best and only way to quickly understand the basic information of new projects at that time.

Skirmantas Januskas, co-founder of DappRadar, comes from Lithuania. Unlike many industry leaders who hold multiple positions, he has been solely focused on DappRadar since February 2018. Before that, he briefly worked as a software developer at NFQ. Another co-founder, Dunica Dragos, was formerly an operator at the American gaming giant EA and has also been fully dedicated to DappRadar since its inception.

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

The author found a record of Skirmantas Januskas being interviewed after completing funding in 2019, during the darkest moment of Web3, yet Skirmantas was full of confidence in the industry, believing that as long as the issues of user experience and finding user needs are solved, “centralized applications will become a thing of the past.”

In 2019, this passionate “youngster” published insights on DeFi, gaming, and other sectors, which eventually saw an explosion in 2021. Although most of the DeFi data pie was taken by DefiLlama, its comprehensive data and deep exploration of emerging concepts like NFT, GameFi, and the metaverse allowed it to have millions of users at its peak. Some small projects that can't even be found on Twitter can be seen on DappRadar, with DAU fluctuating between 0 and 3.

Professionalism has become the greatest original sin.

If I had to summarize the biggest reason for DappRadar's failure, it would be that it is too crypto-native and has overlooked the importance of commercialization.

As of today, when you open the homepage of DappRadar, you will find that the categories it displays include games, DeFi, NFTs, gambling, and the newly added AI, RWA, and social, which have been consistently maintained since its inception. However, popular themes such as meme are nowhere to be seen. So why is it called Skirmantas, a reckless youth, who continues to insist on releasing a detailed report every quarter even in a field like NFTs, and is still tracking obscure airdrops, yet is almost completely out of touch with all the hot topics.

DappRadar has been arguably the only platform covering all long-tail areas and projects in Web3 over the past two years, but the problem is that it seems to only focus on the tail.

This kind of nitpicking professionalism can indeed provide high-quality material for a report by Bloomberg and Forbes, but it has no commercial value. The RADAR token launched after the funding in 2021 seems to have no better application scenarios apart from subscribing to Pro services, staking, and voting, and it has also blocked the most premium source of subscription revenue.

The image established in the early stages through comprehensiveness gradually became a shackle in the later stages. The professionalism of DeFi does not match that of DefiLlama, the token information seems to be inferior to CMC, and the depth of research does not reach the level of Bankless. The only area where it excels is the NFT track, which is currently stagnant. However, I believe DappRadar itself became aware of these issues earlier, so it has also accelerated its commercialization efforts, including providing high-quality data through APIs and offering advertising spaces.

After the financing in 2021, DappRadar has sustained for another 4 years. Besides the financing itself, it has certainly generated some income through traffic monetization, but clearly, these revenues still fall short compared to the costs required to provide massive data that enables exponential growth. Additionally, since 2023, although the market has been rising, there are not many projects with sufficient budgets. The limited budgets have been increasingly spent on KOLs, exchanges, and some emerging platforms, leaving DappRadar, which has been left behind on the beach, struggling with its diminishing resources.

As mentioned earlier, its coverage is too long-tailed, to the extent that project parties may have no way to determine what kind of user profile will refer to DappRadar's information under what circumstances. In the primordial era, DappRadar provided a channel to understand new projects, but after the great waves have washed away the sand, the channels for understanding the few “high-quality projects” are becoming increasingly diverse, and the old legacy is no longer the only best choice.

Compared to the simple website from two or three years ago, the current DappRadar is comprehensive but appears chaotic. This reflects an excessive push towards commercialization, embodying the concept of “exhausting all possibilities” mentioned in the farewell letter. For DappRadar, without ongoing funding and not having more financing money than it can spend, it is necessary to demonstrate a selection of content and restraint in ad display on the website. DappRadar's excessive insistence on professionalism or “orthodoxy,” along with the realization of its mistakes later on and the piling up of content and advertisements, has exposed its insufficient operational capabilities.

In addition to its own shortcomings, Web3 data and information platforms are inherently difficult businesses to operate. Nowadays, with the explosion of multi-chain data, the costs of indexing and servers are soaring, and there is a high demand for quality data in the market, but a lack of matching payment capability. Without other sources of income, relying solely on advertising and selling APIs will inevitably face competition. Platforms with low premium capability will increase advertising density to survive, which diminishes user experience, leading to a seemingly inevitable decline.

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 stark reminder for future entrants: if the business model cannot be closed-loop from day one, even the most authoritative data cannot prevent “bleeding to death.”