These crypto chains raised $500M but generate just $360 in daily fees

Just a few short years ago, the crypto hype was strong. VCs were eager to pour money into solutions for scalability, data availability, and any number of buzzwords.

Since then, the advent of powerful AI models and prolonged bear markets have taken the wind out of crypto’s sails and many chains which promised the future are now as good as forgotten.

One keen-eyed X user, crypto marketer Stacy Muur, noted the staggering $500 million invested across six blockchain projects which, together, have produced a total of just $360 in blockchain fees in the past 24 hours.

These projects raised more than $500 million.

VCs do also cry. pic.twitter.com/FZqm3v7oap

Read more: AscendEx shutdown: Uncertainty over withdrawals as hot wallets lack funds

The claim caught Protos’ eye, so we took a look at the six companies to see where it all went wrong.

Berachain is a blockchain born as a spinoff of the 2021-era Bong Bears NFT collection. It claims to be the first proof-of-liquidity based chain, and aims to be a “growth engine for onchain businesses.”

The project raised a total of $142 million across two rounds in 2023 and 2024. 

However, according to its most recent EoY statement, the project has struggled amidst issues with sentiment, shrinking crypto-native TAM and “increased skepticism around the value of infrastructure as a whole.”

Since launching in early 2025, its BERA token is down 98%.

Berachain was among the networks caught up in November’s devastating Balancer hack, leading validators to temporarily halt the network.

Later that same month, it was revealed that one of the backers, Brevan Howard’s Nova Digital, was granted a one year, risk-free refund right on its $25 million investment.

Read more: Balancer exploit drains $129M in DeFi disaster

Celestia was seen as a hot ticket back in 2023 when “data availability” was the buzzword du jour.

Part of the Cosmos ecosystem, it promises bespoke, high throughput, modular chains “for companies with internet-scale traffic.”

It raised first $1.5 million in 2021, a further $50 million in 2022 and finally $100 million in 2024.

Its much-hyped token launch was one of the first rays of light following a deep bear market sparked by the catastrophic crypto collapses of 2022.

Despite initially surging around 10x in its first months to an all-time high of over $20, TIA eventually bled approximately 98%, sitting today at $0.40.

Scroll raised a total of $83 million over three funding rounds, the latest of which brought the Ethereum L2 to a $1.8 billion valuation in March 2023.

It made just $24 in fees yesterday.

The zkEVM layer two hit a peak TVL of $585 million as users enthusiastically farmed an ultimately disappointing airdrop. In the aftermath, the network lost around 75% of its TVL within a couple of months.

There’s currently just under $12 million on the chain.

Eclipse billed itself as “Solana on Ethereum,” an SVM layer two network which would pair Solana’s performance with Ethereum’s liquidity.

Developer Eclipse Labs raised a total of $65 million, most of which came in a $50 million Series A, led by Placeholder and Hack VC, in March 2024.

DeFiLlama data shows the chain’s TVL peaking at almost $50 million in late February last year. It’s currently down to just $1.15 million, a drop of approximately 98%.

The project’s most recent blog post is from a year ago, announcing the launch of its token ES, and an airdrop. Eclipse Labs has since pivoted to development of The Human API, a marketplace for AI agents to hire humans.

Launched as Fantom by controversial developer Andre Cronje, founder of DeFi stalwart Yearn Finance, the fast, low-cost network migrated to Sonic in 2024. It raised a total of $61 million across six rounds between 2018 and 2024, according to ICODrops.

As Fantom, it took a hit in the Multichain debacle, with many bridged assets depegged from their native versions.

Fantom’s peak TVL reached a staggering $7.9 billion in 2022 and now sits at just under $5 million. Sonic’s hit $1.2 billion last spring, but has since dropped to $16 million.

Cronje’s involvement with Sonic terminated last month and he’s spent much of the last 18 months building Flying Tulip.

Read more: Andre Cronje says someone stole his code to build a $1B DeFi project

ZK-focused Manta raised a total of $60 million across four rounds between 2021 and 2023. 

Its TVL chart is dramatic, highlighting an intense, heavily gamified airdrop campaign, which saw over $650 million poured into the chain.

Just a few weeks before its peak, TVL sat at under $20 million. Likewise, within four months, it was back below $50 million once again. Today, just $4 million is held on the chain.

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