Pingu Exchange, 0xPPL shut down as crypto winter claims more projects

Pingu Exchange (PINGU) announced its closure date as July 31 and was quickly joined by 0xPPL, which also announced that it would be ending all operations at the end of June. The development adds to the growing list of projects shutting down in the crypto ecosystem. 

The news reveals a growing pattern in the industry where more and more projects that had real users, real activity, and real investors find it hard to pull through the market, eventually closing up shop as prices continue to spiral. 

Pingu’s failed gamble

The fall of Pingu Exchange is a reminder of the harsh realities of migrating to a different chain. The platform launched in January 2024 on Arbitrum with around $270,000 in capital and was gaining ground in the ecosystem, generating $2.4 billion in trades over 18 months with around $650,000 in ETH and USDC shared to stakers. 

Following the success, the team decided to pivot to the Monad mainnet, betting its treasury funds on the growth of the new chain. This move didn’t pay off, and in six months, trading volume had dropped to $80 million, compared to the $2.4 billion it did while on Arbitrum. 

Additionally, total funds on the platform dropped to $59,781 and were generating only $71 in fees daily, according to DefiLlama. By June, the protocol had nothing left to work with. 

Following its closure, the team will distribute the remaining 64.46 ETH in its treasury to users who bought and held on to the PINGU token on Arbitrum in 2024. On the other hand, the team’s share of the total token supply will not be used to claim any ETH, allowing PINGU token holders to get a better payout.

0xPPL ceases operations after four years

0xPPL’s shutdown is a lot harder to understand, as the project had sufficient backing, making this difficult to categorize as a small team losing steam. The project launched in August 2024 with notable projects like Alliance DAO, Anagram, and Peak XV Partners backing them up. 

On top of that, they also had popular crypto figures like Anatoly Yakovenko and Balaji Srinivasan backing the project.

Sadly, all that was not enough as the project shut down all trading operations on June 6, and the app completely goes offline on June 30, 2026. Following this announcement, the team has also urged users to move all funds out and not wait for the last minute.

Projects are losing steam amid extended winter 

Bitcoin currently sits below the $69,000 mark on CoinMarketCap, down 5.1% in the past hour and down 12% over the past week. Additionally, Ethereum also sits at $1,912 and has suffered a drop of 2.5% at the time of writing. 

The effect of these numbers on the broader industry is telling as Consensys, Grayscale, Kraken, and Ledger have all delayed going public this year. Currently, the only crypto company that has completed its stock listing in 2026 remains BitGo, which raised around $213 million in January 2026, and now trades 36% below its initial price listing. 

These numbers and the effects on the market leave smaller projects with little to no options, especially as they do not have any stock market options to fall back on. So whenever their trading volume drops and token prices fall, they usually run out of money and can only look to retreat from the market.