How is the “outdated” superstar protocol of Web3 now?

Author: Stacy Muur Translation: Shan Oppa, Bitchain Vision

People rarely leave because of problems with a certain agreement.More often, they leave because that story no longer develops—no new beliefs to follow, no new directions to align.

Web3 is a world, and “Web3 Protagonist Halo” is another level.

At that moment, a protocol suddenly became popular, and the timeline was full of its news, and each project was either integrating it or copying it.You must know that feeling.

FriendTech has had that kind of moment.Pump.fun definitely has it.Farcaster, Bananagun and Unibot also have them, each in their own cycles for different reasons.

That feeling was direct, quick, noisy.

But the more difficult truth is: the popularity will always shift.Not because the product failed, but because people found new toys that were more flashy.The shelf life of freshness is very short, and in the field of Web3, the spotlight never stays for a long time.

This article is not a eulogy.Not all of these agreements are “dead”.But they all went through the same process—from domination to silence.This post tells what those projects that once had the protagonist’s aura would look like when they no longer make headlines.

Who are we discussing

I stayed in this circle long enough to see this pattern clearly: a protocol became popular, occupied the entire timeline, and then quietly faded out.This table is a snapshot, not a success measure of TVL or token prices, but a measure of things that are harder to capture: attention, memory points, emotional resonance.These projects once dominated the timeline.Some are still persisting.

FriendTech, for example, has risen quickly and loudly, but its collapse is also complete – no roadmap, no user stickiness, no trace of recovery.Once the popularity passes, it becomes a burden.

Let’s take a look at Unibot: It survived hacking, cloning waves and market weakness, but is still considered one of the cleanest and best-used trading user experiences.

There is also Virtuals, one of the few projects that not only “survived” but completed “transformation”.It was originally just a prediction game based on the Base chain, but now it claims to be “Wall Street for Artificial Intelligence Agents.”This transformation is very rare in the crypto world, not to mention in projects born in degen gambling fields.

Pump.fun and Maestro are another story: not dead, just diluted.They are still in operation, and occasionally active peaks, but no one says they are revolutionary projects.Meme coin machines and sniper robot networks were not designed for long-term existence from the beginning, they were just for “explosion”.And they did explode – they just couldn’t explode the second time.

Then there are those “slow-hot” projects: Grass, DeBank, Farcaster.They each have their own “existence” – speculative returns, DeFi social identities, and decentralized dialogue.They are not ostentatious and do not disappear, but are quietly and intentionally continuously constructed outside the craze.

Still building, still iterating

If the previous table is about a mapping of “cultural gravity”, then this table records another thing completely: resilience.Because the heat is noisy, real construction is often quiet.

Some of these agreements are no longer “fire”, but they have not stopped.This table reveals projects that are still releasing updates, expanded integrations or strengthening infrastructure, although they are out of the public eye.

FriendTech?It has been officially closed in September 2024.

But what about the others?They are quietly accumulating compound interest – not on the timeline, but in the update log.

Peak activity ≠ persistent correlation

You can always feel the peak coming.Telegram group messages are flooded to the point where they cannot scroll.CT is full of order traders and half-baked posts.The protocol’s UI collapsed under the weight of its own hype.

But to maintain this state?That’s another matter.

Let’s analyze what the data shows, not what was once promised, but about the actual behavior of the user.

Virtuals

Virtuals’ agent creation peaked in October 2024, with more than 60 agents being created in a single day, followed by a wave of experiments in November and December.By early 2025, the number of daily agent creations has dropped to single digits.

Bananagun

Bananagun’s peak activity reached 700 million in July 2024.

Nine months later?Only 124.6 million.It fell by 82%.

It is still active and still delivering products, but is no longer the first choice.Telegram robots are pouring into the market, sniping transactions become the basic operation, and the narrative has shifted.Bananagun did not collapse, but just faded out of people’s horizon.

DeBank

DeBank experienced a surge in multi-chain registrations in mid-2023, then flattened completely.By early 2024, new users stopped emerging.The product itself did not collapse, but the narrative itself collapsed.DeFi social sounds good, but people don’t stay.Maybe they just focused on a few wallets and left.

Farcaster

This is what quiet accumulation looks like.Since the end of 2024, Farcaster’s daily active users have remained stable between 20,000 and 50,000, and user participation continues.There is no massive surge, nor airdrop bait.Only real use.When most social protocols are chasing noise, Farcaster develops a habit, but the real victory is people keep turning back.

Pump.fun

Pump.fun is a volcano.By the end of 2024, it minted millions of meme coins, with more than 150,000 new wallets appearing every day at its peak.After that, the curve dropped sharply.But it did not die out, but was stable at a casting volume of 50,000 to 60,000 per day.Still useful, still fun.It’s just that it is no longer the kind of cultural prosperity it once became briefly.

User buying stories

You can track usage on the dashboard.But what about belief?It exists elsewhere.To understand this, we must go back to the past, to the moments in which they have meaning.When FriendTech transforms social influence into mobility, Pump.fun feels like a game changer, and Farcaster is more like a declaration than just a social app.

Those are not only product releases, but also emotional turning points.People don’t just use these protocols, they also agree with them.FriendTech makes us feel like we are early participants.Pump.fun makes us feel smart.Farcaster makes us feel like we are part of something cleaner than Twitter.

FriendTech

FriendTech’s narrative is very attractive: tokenize your social relationships and monetize your influence.At its peak, it was not just another SocialFi tool, it was also a symbol of identity as an asset.But this story collapsed under its own weight.There is no roadmap, no participation cycle, no cultural endurance.This is a rare case where usage, narrative and product disappear simultaneously.Clean Rise and Clean Death.

Bananagun

Bananagun’s story is about leveling the playing field.Fast sniping, smart token economics, and robots for ordinary traders.It flourished in the Telegram robot wave, gaining fame by being sharper and faster than other competitors.What about now?It is still running, still serving traders.But it has become an infrastructure that is useful, but no longer leads the conversation.

Maestro

Maestro positions itself as the silent force behind a decentralized financial economy.It sells not trading robots, but leverage provided through infrastructure.But as less than 1% of the tokens it launched survived, the narrative has changed.Now, it’s more of a cautionary tale: what happens when open infrastructure becomes too open, too fast.

Unibot

Unibot focuses on pure speed and precision.It positioned itself as the tool of the most keen Telegram trader, not just a product, but an identity.Despite the competition and even a hack, Unibot’s reputation remains solid.Its functions continue to expand and its user base is maintained.It does not rely on virality, but on reliability.Such a reputation remains strong.

Pump.fun

Pump.fun democratizes token creation and brings the illusion of momentary relevance.At its peak, it feels like a new asset class is born every 10 seconds.But saturation comes quickly.Today, it is still active and still minting tokens, but the magic has faded.The story of “Everyone Can Start” lost its glory after “Everyone” was launched and most disappeared.