Older crypto projects are increasingly moving away from their original chains, or giving up chains they built themselves, and shifting to larger, more established ecosystems.
The Foresight article highlights several examples. Sophon, a project in the zkSync ecosystem, moved from zkSync to Base. Moonbeam, a leading parachain in the Polkadot ecosystem, moved to Base. Secret Network, once seen as a high-profile privacy chain, moved from Cosmos to Arbitrum.
Where projects are moving
Looking across migration cases over the past few years, the article says these projects tend to share a few traits.
One common pattern is a move to lower-fee layer-2 networks. That applies mainly to projects that originally ran on Ethereum mainnet. Before Ethereum’s upgrades over the past year, transaction costs were high enough that some teams chose to relocate to layer-2 networks to cut operating costs.
Most of the projects making those moves have been non-financial applications with relatively frequent usage. The article cites Farcaster, a social project, as an example. Financial applications, by contrast, have been much less likely to make the same kind of shift.
Another pattern is that Base and Arbitrum have become the main destinations. Citing the latest data from DefiLlama, the article says Base and Arbitrum are already far ahead of other Ethereum layer-2 competitors in TVL.
That lead shows up in capital terms, but the article argues it also reflects ecosystem coordination and overall activity. In that environment, projects that can capture even a small share of capital flows and user attention may have a better chance of staying alive. For teams that cannot build their own ecosystem or attract enough users, Base and Arbitrum have become a last resort.
Why this bear market looks tougher
The article notes that project migration has happened in past bear markets as well. What stands out this time is the frequency and the profile of the projects involved.
Its explanation is that the current downturn is more severe for the crypto sector than earlier cycles. In previous bear markets, the main pressure came from the cycle itself: capital stayed away and user attention was hard to gather.
This time, crypto is dealing with that same cyclical strain while also facing heavier competition from outside the sector, especially from the artificial intelligence ecosystem.
The article argues that in earlier downturns, projects without much differentiation could still hope to ride renewed market enthusiasm in a later bull cycle and repackage older narratives. It says that possibility is now close to zero. If a project fails to survive this bear market, it may not get another chance to reinvent itself.
On that view, many teams now see this period as their last realistic shot at staying alive.
Migration may not fix the core problem
The piece adds that projects still able to migrate are, in a sense, the fortunate ones. Others that were once at the top of the market have already shut down in this cycle. It points to Zapper, described in the article as a former top DeFi asset management project, which recently announced that it would cease operations.
Even so, the article is not optimistic about the projects moving into larger ecosystems. Its view is that most of them may only be buying time rather than securing survival.
The reason, it says, is that the deeper problem is not simply which chain they are on. Many of these projects have spent years failing to adapt to changes in the broader ecosystem, and they have not found a model that can produce stable revenue. If they could not solve that over the past several years, the article suggests the odds of solving it now are slim.
What the market may reward next
From that perspective, the article says this bear market is already making it easier to identify which projects are more likely to survive.
Beyond a limited group that may endure, it argues that investors no longer need to spend much time on projects that have been around for years, still show little business progress and generate no revenue, no matter how strong their reputation or popularity once was.
Its focus now is narrower: projects that can create new models, new scenarios and new applications, while also producing real cash revenue.
The original article also includes a disclaimer that markets carry risk and the piece does not constitute investment advice. Readers should assess whether any opinions, views or conclusions fit their own circumstances and bear responsibility for their own decisions.