Fade List

Player retention collapsed once token incentives dried up. Studios pivoting to traditional F2P with optional on-chain assets.

• Axie Infinity daily active users down 95% from peak
• Major studios (Ubisoft, Square Enix) quietly shelving NFT game divisions
• Surviving projects removing 'NFT' from branding

Zoom fatigue turned out to be preferable to avatar fatigue. Spatial audio and 2D tools won over 3D world-building.

• Meta Horizon Workrooms usage flatlined at <1000 DAU
• Microsoft shuttered AltspaceVR and pulled back on Mesh
• Spatial.io pivoted entirely to 2D collaboration

Full autonomy keeps receding into the future. The long tail of edge cases is harder than predicted. L2+/L3 with human oversight is the pragmatic path.

• Cruise suspended operations after SF pedestrian incident
• Waymo still geofenced to specific metro areas after 15+ years
• Tesla FSD rebranded from 'Full Self-Driving' in regulatory filings

As foundation model APIs commoditize and prices race to zero, products without proprietary data or workflow moats are dying.

• VC funding for 'AI wrapper' startups down 70% YoY
• OpenAI, Anthropic, Google adding native features that kill wrapper use cases
• Jasper, Copy.ai pivoting to enterprise workflow tools

Decentralized social networks failed to solve the cold start problem. Users don't care about data ownership enough to leave network effects.

• Lens Protocol and Farcaster combined DAU still <50K
• BlueSky succeeded by hiding the AT Protocol, not marketing it
• friend.tech abandoned after <6 months

Pure retrieval-augmented generation is being superseded by agentic architectures that combine retrieval, reasoning, tool use, and memory in orchestrated workflows.

• Anthropic, OpenAI shifting docs from 'RAG' to 'tool use + retrieval'
• LangChain pivoted from RAG framework to agent orchestration
• Enterprise deployments finding RAG accuracy ceiling at ~80%

Promised to replace DNS but adoption stalled. ENS registrations declining as speculation faded and no killer app materialized.

• ENS new registrations down 85% from 2022 peak
• Unstoppable Domains shifted focus from domains to digital identity
• Browser support remains limited to niche extensions

Models are getting better at understanding intent. The gap between a 'good prompt' and a 'bad prompt' is shrinking rapidly as context windows expand.

• Job postings for 'Prompt Engineer' down 60% from peak
• Anthropic and OpenAI investing in models that need less prompting
• Context engineering and agent orchestration replacing prompt craft

Practical quantum advantage remains 5-10 years away for most use cases. Current machines are too noisy for real-world problems beyond narrow benchmarks.

• IBM shifted roadmap from qubit count to 'quantum utility' framing
• Several quantum startups pivoted to quantum-inspired classical algorithms
• Error correction overhead still requires 1000:1 physical-to-logical qubit ratio

Voice assistants hit a ceiling. Users settled on timers and music. Smart home is moving to ambient intelligence and AI agents, not voice commands.

• Amazon Alexa division reported $10B+ cumulative losses
• Google Home pivoting to Gemini-powered proactive assistance
• Matter/Thread protocol adoption shifting control to local-first apps

The promise of blockchain-verified carbon credits hasn't materialized. Quality issues in the underlying credit market make tokenization premature.

• Toucan Protocol's BCT token price down 90% from launch
• Verra banned tokenization of its registry credits
• Focus shifting to direct carbon removal measurement over offsets

The market is saturated and commoditized. Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube all built native link/shop features, crushing standalone tools.

• Linktree growth stalled; multiple competitors shut down
• Instagram and TikTok native shopping features capturing GMV
• Creator revenue shifting to direct brand deals and subscriptions