Why do crypto projects always end up "unfinished"? The truth behind the 18-month curse

Recently, I’ve been chatting with some founders and noticed that their project histories are a bit wild: in 2021 they were building NFT platforms, in 2022 they pivoted to DeFi mining, in 2023-2024 they chased AI Agents, and now they’re eyeing prediction markets, ready to jump in.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, but the problem is—none of them have ever actually finished anything.

Product Cycles Are Accelerating Toward Collapse

This cycle used to take 3-4 years: a new concept gains traction → a flood of funding → everyone pivots → 2-3 years of development → the hype fades → wait for the next trend.

Now? It’s compressed to just 18 months.

Q2 2025 data is sobering: crypto VC funding dropped nearly 60% quarter-over-quarter. For founders, this means:

• Less time
• Less money
• More pressure
• Pivoting is inevitable

The Core Paradox: Real, usable infrastructure takes 3-5 years to build, but you only have 18 months. Users start to leave after 12 months, and investors start pushing you to pivot by month 6.

If you stubbornly stick to the old story, you’ll be labeled a “low-efficiency asset”—investors avoid you, users leave, and the best team members jump ship to new projects that just raised big money.

The Sunk Cost Trap, Played Backwards

Traditional business wisdom says: don’t fall into the sunk cost trap, let go when you need to.

Crypto has flipped this and turned it into the “maximize sunk cost game.” The rules are simple:

Smallest resistance appears → pivot
User growth slows → pivot
Funding stalls → pivot

Every founder faces a binary choice:

• Option A: Spend another 2-3 years solidifying your current product, and if you’re lucky, raise another round
• Option B: Change your story, raise money immediately, bank some paper gains, and exit before things fall apart

90% pick B—for reasons you can imagine.

Products Are Always “Almost Done”

DeFi-Lego falling apart? Launch the AI-Agent version right away.
AI-Agent community not taking off? Prediction markets are the future.

It looks like innovation and iteration, but it’s really an avoidance of defining “done.”

Completion means clear boundaries, means you can be measured, and also means you’re easy to copy. By never finishing, you leave plenty of room for imagination, allowing investors and the market to keep funding you blindly.

VCs Chase Hype, Not Products

The reality is harsh:

New concept + no product = $50 million in funding
Mature concept + real product = struggling to raise $5 million
Old concept + users = basically ignored

VCs are betting on attention, not products. And attention always points to the next big story, not yesterday’s finished product.

This leads the whole industry to focus on “narrative maximization”—optimizing for fundraising stories, not user value.

Why Can’t This Change?

Three locked-in reasons:

1. Token Incentive Design
As long as early exit is possible, founders and investors will take it. Nothing can stop this.

2. Information Spreads Much Faster Than Products Can Be Built
By the time you spend 3 years actually building, someone else has cloned your idea, spent 3 months plus better marketing, and wiped you out.

3. Crypto’s DNA Is “Speed”
If you force it to slow down, it’s like making a Tesla drive at 30 mph—it goes against its nature.

So What Actually Survives?

Ironically, the things in crypto with real long-term staying power mostly appeared when no one was paying attention.

Bitcoin in 2009? No VCs, no funding, no exchanges.
Ethereum at launch? Smart contracts were just a hypothesis—no one knew what they could do.

These were all built during the “winter.” Most things born in bull cycles die with the cycle.

The Final Irony

You could be a principled founder: stick to your original vision, refuse to follow trends, and spend years honing your product.

The result? You’ll most likely be short on cash, forgotten, replaced—by projects that have already iterated three times before you’ve even launched your v1.

The market rewards “starting,” not “finishing.” Starting, over and over again.

So maybe the real innovation in crypto isn’t in the technology itself, but in this: extracting maximum value at the lowest level of completion.

Or, in other words, pivoting is the product.