Public Chain Catastrophe: Robinhood Chain Ignites Major Market Reshuffle

Author: Hu Tao, ChainCatcher

I. Shutdown Wave and Siphon Effect: The Ice and Fire of Public Chain Tracks

The crypto infrastructure sector is experiencing an unprecedented structural collapse.

According to public information, in the past three months, Scroll, Harmony, Moonbeam, Saga, Lisk, [Secret Network](https://www.rootdata.com/zh/Projects/detail/Secret Network?k=MTU1 "Privacy public chain based on Cosmos SDK"), Sophon, and other Layer 1/2 projects have announced the shutdown of their blockchains, transitioning to AI or payment sectors. Additionally, this year, projects like Loopring, Dango, DFK Chain, Botanix, Over Protocol, Mint, Intergaze, and Pryzm, which once occupied various tracks, have also announced a complete halt in operations. From established ZK Rollup players to Bitcoin ecosystem Layer 2s, from application chain pioneers to modular public chains, various positioned legacy projects are collectively exiting the foundational public chain arena.

This is a "zeroing out" exit with no way back: as the mainnet halts, without migration or redemption arrangements, on-chain applications, assets, and ecological data will face the risk of becoming worthless, potentially wasting years of technical accumulation, community operations, and ecological investments. Behind this resolute choice is the project team's complete pessimism about the prospects of the general public chain track, while the continuously deteriorating survival environment is constantly compressing their maneuvering space.

In the deep adjustment of the industry over the past 1-2 years, these projects have long been trapped in a death spiral of ecological decay: on-chain activity has plummeted, existing applications have gradually ceased operations, users and funds have continuously flowed out, and the prices of the vast majority of legacy Layer 1/2 tokens have dropped over 90% from historical highs, leading to a complete collapse of market confidence. Even more fatal is the failure of the business model—underlying operations, technological iterations, and ecological incentives all require continuous high investment, but with the ecological exhaustion, transaction fee income has nearly dropped to zero, leaving project teams without the ability to generate revenue, relying solely on reserves to survive.

To make matters worse, many Layer 1/2 projects have recently encountered hacker attacks. According to security agencies, there were a total of 182 security incidents in the first half of 2026 across the industry, resulting in losses of approximately $956 million, with the number of incidents increasing by over 50% year-on-year. The frequent occurrence of security incidents further undermines the already fragile user trust and depletes the already strained financial reserves of project teams. For small and medium-sized public chains on the brink of survival, a single hacker attack can be the last straw that breaks the camel's back, directly pushing projects towards shutdown.

In the context of both survival and narrative bankruptcy, transformation has become one of the few ways out. Among them, the payment sector represents a relatively real cash flow and compliance breakthrough, while AI is one of the few narratives in the current capital market willing to offer high premiums, naturally becoming the two core directions for these teams' transformation.

What truly ends the fantasy of legacy public chains is the strong rise of emerging traffic-oriented public chains and extreme resource siphoning, with the explosion of Robinhood Chain marking this trend. The current crypto market is witnessing extreme polarization: on one side, leading ecosystems like Robinhood Chain are bustling with activity, with numerous newly established applications and token projects rushing in; on the other side, legacy public chains are deserted, with few new projects entering for months, and existing ecosystems continue to shrink, creating a stark contrast in the heat between old and new tracks.

The core driving force behind this polarization lies in the fact that RWA and tokenized stocks have become one of the core narratives of this industry wave, while Robinhood Chain, backed by traditional retail brokerage giants, has inherent advantages in compliance user base, financial asset resources, and transaction scenario accumulation. When a new project can choose to build within a mature ecosystem with $800 million in TVL and hundreds of thousands of active addresses, or deploy on a chain with fewer than three daily active users, the choice requires almost no hesitation.

RootData's statistics confirm this extreme pattern: over 93% of newly established crypto projects in 2026 are concentrated in a few ecosystems like Robinhood Chain, Solana, Base, Hyperliquid, Ethereum, BNB Chain, and Arc. Eighty percent of the industry's incremental capital, developers, and user traffic are divided among a few leading public chains, while hundreds of legacy public chains can only compete for less than 5% of project resources, severely compressing their survival space.

The wave of traditional finance and licensed platforms entering the public chain space is also accelerating, with Circle's Arc, Kraken's Ink, and Upbit's GIWA eyeing the opportunity. They also come with compliance qualifications, user traffic, and financial scenarios, further squeezing the survival space of legacy general public chains and accelerating the industry's clearing pace.

II. The Endgame Has Arrived: Where Is the Future of Public Chain Tracks Heading?

Extending the timeline, the essence of this mass retreat is the failure of the value capture logic of public chains.

In the last cycle, the industry believed in a simple hypothesis: as long as a faster, cheaper, and more decentralized chain is created, users and funds will naturally gather, and tokens will appreciate accordingly. This hypothesis supported the birth and valuation of hundreds of Layer 1/2 projects.

But reality has provided the opposite answer—technical correctness does not equate to user correctness. When liquidity, distribution channels, and compliance entry points are concentrated in the hands of a few giants, the so-called "performance advantages" and "modular narratives" of independent public chains crumble in the face of real user acquisition costs.

The new narrative that has replaced it is payment and stablecoins. Circle's Arc, Kraken's Ink, and Robinhood Chain are essentially not "public chains for the sake of public chains," but rather treat the chain as a settlement pipeline for their financial businesses. The chain is no longer the goal but a means; tokens are no longer the core of value capture; stablecoins and real transactions are.

This also explains why AI has become another transformation route. When a chain has neither users nor income, repackaging an already formed engineering team into the narrative of "AI infrastructure" can at least earn a breath of fresh air in the financing market—though whether this can truly succeed remains another story that needs time to validate.

Looking ahead, the public chain track will present two clear trends:

First, the head concentration pattern will be thoroughly solidified, and the Matthew effect will continue to intensify. The leading ecosystem represented by Robinhood Chain will continue to monopolize industry incremental resources with its advantages in traffic, capital, and brand, with ecological scale and network effects becoming increasingly strong. Meanwhile, a large number of small and medium-sized general public chains will completely lose their survival space; shutdowns, transformations, and acquisitions will become the norm, and ultimately only a few leading players will remain in the general public chain track.

Second, scene segmentation will replace general narratives, and vertical public chains will become mainstream. The era of "one chain serving all scenarios" has ended; future public chains must deeply bind to specific business scenarios, such as payment settlement, AI computing networks, RWA asset issuance, and derivatives trading. In fact, many legacy public chains transitioning to AI and payment sectors are essentially abandoning the general underlying narrative in favor of deep cultivation in vertical scenarios. Polygon's transition to stablecoin payments follows the same path.

Transitioning from technical idealism to commercial realism is an inevitability in the development of the crypto industry.

III. Conclusion

From a flourishing diversity to collective shutdowns, the fate of legacy Layer 1/2 projects is a microcosm of the ten-year development of the crypto industry.

Looking back at history, almost every technological revolution has gone through a similar script: capital frenzy, overcapacity, severe clearing, and redefinition of patterns. The public chain track is no exception—when the threshold for "building chains" is low enough for anyone to participate, the oversupply is destined to end with a large number of shutdowns.

Those that can truly survive this round of reshuffling are not the chains with the "most elegant technology," but those that possess distribution capabilities, real demand, and compliance moats. The explosion of Robinhood Chain merely lays bare this already established rule for everyone to see.

For independent public chains that are still holding on, the window of opportunity is running out. They must either find irreplaceable differentiated value or turn around gracefully—just as these pioneers have done.