You asked about DeFi
5 people built something like it. 3 are gone.
That is 75% of the ones whose fate we could settle, against 23% across the whole register. 1 were acquired.
| Launched | What it was | Today |
|---|---|---|
| 2022-01-01 | YCMagna Carta for Web3: token vesting and DeFi investment management. · magna.so | acquired |
| 2022-01-01 | YCCypher Crypto Neo-Bank (WhatsApp moment for bank accounts) · cypherhq.io | still up |
| 2022-01-01 | YCCashmere Crypto wallet for web3 startups · cashmere.finance | gone |
| 2022-06-01 | Decentralized, anonymous, and accountable identity on Web3. · notebooklabs.xyz | gone |
| 2022-06-01 | YCPayfura Global payment gateway to buy/sell crypto · payfura.com | gone |
How this compares
The register re-probes every domain it holds. Some that answered last month stop answering. We send that list — what went quiet, and what it was — once a month. Nothing else.
How this was made. Show HN entries are every post from 2021 to 2023 with at least five points that linked to its own domain; code hosts and free hosting are excluded, because a repository outlives the effort behind it. Product Hunt entries needed 100 votes — a far higher bar, so they are the promoted top slice rather than a like-for-like sample. Both are judged by asking the domain whether it still answers: gone means it no longer resolves, refuses the connection, serves a parking page, or says plainly that it shut down. An HTTP error is not counted as gone — a server answering 404 is one somebody still pays for, and an audit of 25 gone-calls found two such sites alive with only a moved homepage. Y Combinator entries use the status YC publishes itself, which is why only those can say acquired. Squatted domains — a lapsed name now serving somebody else's site — are not detected, so these figures run slightly low.