Enough time has passed to examine what became of the large number of alternative networks launched in early periods.
The launch wave
Modified copies of existing codebases with adjusted parameters.
Which was technically trivial and produced very large numbers of launches.
Differentiation was frequently limited to block time, supply schedule and name.
Attrition
The large majority ceased development and trading within a few years.
Which is documented in listings data and in repository activity.
Abandoned networks continue to exist technically while nobody maintains or uses them.
Security through the decline
Networks with falling participation became cheap to attack.
Which produced successful reorganisation attacks on several small chains.
Exchanges delisted assets following such attacks, accelerating the decline.
The survivors
Networks with genuine technical differentiation, sustained development and actual usage.
Which is a small proportion of what launched.
Several established durable communities and continue to operate.
Pump and dump schemes
Coordinated buying and promotion followed by selling into the resulting demand.
Which was documented extensively and prosecuted in several cases.
Low-liquidity assets were the natural targets.
Exchange listing dynamics
Listing produced immediate price effects, creating incentives around it.
Which attracted scrutiny of listing practices and fees.
Several venues subsequently published listing criteria and fee policies.
What distinguished those that lasted
A technical reason to exist, developers who stayed, and users who were not there for price.
Which is identifiable in retrospect and was contested at the time.
The base rate
The historical attrition rate for these launches is very high, which is the relevant context for any new one.
This is historical description rather than advice about any asset.
Technical differentiation
Networks offering genuinely different properties — privacy, smart contracts, alternative consensus — survived at higher rates.
Which is unsurprising and was contested at the time.
Parameter changes alone proved insufficient to sustain a community.
Developer retention
Repository activity is a public and reasonable proxy for whether a project continues.
Which shows steep decline for most launches within two years.
Networks with sustained contributor activity are identifiable from that data.
Exchange delistings
Venues remove assets with low volume, security problems or regulatory issues.
Which accelerates decline once it begins.
Delisting notices and withdrawal windows are published, and holders frequently miss them.
Community persistence
Some networks continue with small dedicated communities regardless of market position.
Which is a legitimate outcome and is not what most purchasers were expecting.
The assessment questions
What does this do that alternatives do not, who is building it, and who uses it for a reason other than price.
Fair launch claims
Assertions that no pre-mine or founder allocation existed.
Which were frequently false and were checkable on chain.
Early block distribution analysis exposed several such claims.
Merge mining
Smaller chains secured by miners of larger ones simultaneously.
Which addressed the security budget problem for some networks.
It creates dependency on the larger chain's mining community.
Privacy-focused networks
Several with genuine technical differentiation persisted.
Which have faced delisting pressure from regulated venues.
Their technical contributions have influenced privacy work more broadly.
Community forks
Networks continued by communities after original developers departed.
Which demonstrates that open-source projects can outlive their founders.
What the data shows
Attrition is high, differentiation predicts survival, and the base rate for any new launch is unfavourable.
The honest summary
Thousands launched, a handful survived, and the survivors were the ones doing something the alternatives did not.
That base rate is the relevant context for assessing anything new, and it is available in historical listings data rather than requiring any judgement.
Checking a network's health
Repository activity, node counts, transaction volume excluding wash trading, and developer numbers.
Which are all public and are more informative than any price chart.
A network with a price and no development is a specific and common situation.
The uncomfortable base rate
Of thousands of networks launched, a small number remain in meaningful use.
That figure is checkable from historical listing data and is the appropriate prior for anything new, however good the proposal sounds.
The zombie network problem
Chains still producing blocks with essentially no users or developers.
Which continue to trade on some venues and appear in market data.
Distinguishing these from active networks requires looking at activity rather than at price.
What later launches learned
Technical differentiation, sustained funding and a genuine user need.
Which the more durable of the later generation generally had from the start.
A closing note
The survival rate for networks launched in that period is very low, and the survivors were identifiable by criteria available at the time: what does this do differently, who is building it, and who uses it for a reason other than price.
Those questions still work.
Checking a project today
Repository activity, node count, transaction volume net of wash trading, and who is funding development.
Four public data points that separate active networks from ones that merely still have a price.