Zombicoins - what is it?

Forbes experts called well-known cryptocurrencies such as Litecoin, Cardano, Monero, Bitcoin Cash, and several others zombie coins.

According to analysts, more than 90% of existing cryptocurrencies become zombie coins within just a few years. At the same time, the average lifetime of crypto projects, according to various estimates, is only 1.2 years. Indeed, some Web3 projects that were at the head of previous bull runs in the crypto market have practically "evaporated" for various reasons — they will be discussed in this article.

1. Waves (WAVES)

Waves is one of the oldest blockchain platforms and one of Ethereum's first competitors. The project was even nicknamed "Russian Ethereum " because its founder was a resident of the Russian Federation.

Like the protocol of the leading altcoin in the crypto market, the Waves blockchain was based on smart contract technology and supported various use cases in the DeFi market, including decentralized applications (DApps).

At the end of 2017, Waves was one of the top 30 crypto projects by market capitalization, which was $1.25 billion. At its peak in April 2022, the WAVES cryptocurrency even reached $5.6 billion in market capitalization before plummeting to $628 million.

The reason for such a rapid collapse was the decoupling of USDN stablecoin, issued by the developers of the Waves platform, from the US dollar exchange rate. A similar situation happened a month later with the infamous Terra project (now renamed Terra Classic).

However, unlike Waves, which dropped to the 245th line of CoinMarketCap (CMC), Terra continues to hold quite a high position, being in 130th place in the overall ranking of cryptocurrencies. As of March 2025, the Waves cryptocurrency is at $1.43, only 7.5% higher than its listing price on exchanges in June 2016.

Relative to its all-time high (ATH) of $62.3 in March 2022 — shortly before the crash — the value of WAVES has collapsed by nearly 98%.

Despite this, the Waves team continues to work on the project, but it is hardly discussed in the crypto community anymore.

2. Lisk (LSK)

In May 2016, the Lisk platform was one of the first Layer-2 (or L2) blockchains to scale and address Ethereum's low-bandwidth network.

As of March 2025, Lisk ranks 329th in market capitalization, just over $100 million. The LSK cryptocurrency is valued at $0.57, which is as much as 72% lower relative to the price when it was listed on exchanges in April 2016.

Relative to the ATH level LSK reached in January 2018 at $39.3, the cryptocurrency's exchange rate has fallen by more than 98.5%. At the end of 2017, Lisk was almost among the top 20 cryptocurrencies in the CMC ranking, and its market capitalization reached $2.37 billion.

Amid growing competition in the crypto market and the emergence of new promising blockchain platforms, Lisk has been losing its position significantly since 2018. The situation was aggravated by the lack of activity of developers, who have not released a single major update since 2019.

3. OMG Network (Omise Go)

OMG Network, formerly known as Omise GO, was created as a second-tier solution for scaling the Ethereum blockchain — much like the previously mentioned Lisk. At the end of 2017, still a platform, Omise Go was climbing to No. 22 on the CMC ranking, just behind Lisk, and its capitalization reached $2.02 billion.

OMG Network's architecture is based on its proprietary MoreViable Plasma technology. This technology essentially turns the platform into a sidechain and allows transactions with ERC-20 tokens to be processed outside the Ethereum blockchain. The MoreViable Plasma technology allows the OMG Network blockchain to process up to several thousand transactions per second.

After the 2021 bull run, newer, higher-performing layer 2 solutions such as Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism (OP Mainnet), and others have come to the forefront. While no critical incidents occurred with OMG Network, it's likely that the platform simply couldn't keep up with the competition.

As of March 2025, the market capitalization of OMG's native cryptocurrency platform is only $31.2 million, and its exchange rate is $0.22, down 58% relative to the price at the time of listing, which took place back in July 2017.

4. Bytecoin (BCN)

Bytecoin was created in 2012 and is one of the oldest altcoins in the crypto market. Its blockchain is based on Cryptonote technology, which is focused on ensuring transaction privacy. To enhance privacy, Bytecoin uses a ring signature mechanism similar to the well-known anonymous Monero protocol.

At the end of 2017, Bytecoin even surpassed Dogecoin (DOGE) and Binance Coin (BNB) in terms of market capitalization, reaching $1.08 billion. However, the project began to fade: the Bytecoin blog has not been updated since 2019, and the developers have not released a single update to the Bytecoin protocol since the same year.

While many well-known early altcoins, such as Litecoin (LTC) and Dogecoin (DOGE), have established themselves among the top cryptocurrencies, Bytecoin has lost its position significantly, dropping to the 1,249th position in CoinMarketCap's March 2025 rankings.

Bytecoin has a market capitalization of just $5.2 million and an altcoin exchange rate of $0.000028 including issuance of ~184 billion BCN. Even since its listing in June 2014, the BCN cryptocurrency exchange rate has declined by 56%.

5. BitShares (BTS)

The BitShares blockchain was launched in 2014 and initially positioned as a "Blockchain-as-Organization" (BaO). The developers ought to promote their project as an enterprise-grade decentralized platform.

BitShares was designed by the developer who created the Delegated Proof-of-Stake (DPoS) consensus mechanism that underpins many next-generation blockchain platforms, such as Cardano, Tron, EOS, and Tezos. The platform was initially focused on decentralized asset exchange, which now occurs through DEX exchanges. For this reason, BitShares has even been dubbed the "NYSE* for cryptocurrencies."

* New York Stock Exchange (NYSE)

Although the developers continue to be active, judging by the dynamics, there is almost no investor interest in the project, so BitShares can rather be referred to as zombie coins.

As of March 2025, BitShares's market capitalization is only $3.07 million, and its cryptocurrency exchange rate is $0.001, more than 92% below the value of BTS at the time of its listing in July 2014.