DeFi Superapp Legend Joins Growing List of Crypto Shutdowns
After operating for approximately two years, Legend, a DeFi superapp supported by a16z and Coinbase Ventures, announced its closure due to inadequate growth metrics.
A mobile-focused decentralized finance platform known as Legend has revealed plans to cease operations following roughly two years in the market, joining an expanding roster of cryptocurrency applications that have chosen to close their doors throughout this year.
As a DeFi aggregation platform, Legend sought to deliver decentralized finance services directly to its user base instead of requiring them to access numerous separate wallets or platforms for managing their cryptocurrency holdings.
"We believed the right interface could put DeFi's most powerful primitives in front of mainstream users," Legend co-founder Jayson Hobby said on Tuesday.
Nevertheless, while the platform successfully attracted a user base, it failed to "grow to the scale the company needed to be sustainable long-term," said Hobby. "Closing is the right call for our team and our investors."
More than 20 protocols spanning DeFi, NFT and GameFi sectors have disclosed closure plans this year, with ZeroLend among them, announcing in February its intention to shut down following three years of activity, pointing to a business model that proved unsustainable.
In February, Step Finance, a DeFi aggregation service built on Solana, announced its shutdown following a breach of its $40 million treasury wallet in January, while Polynomial, a protocol focused on DeFi derivatives, similarly halted operations during the same month.
In March, Balancer Labs, the development team responsible for the Balancer DeFi protocol, closed operations amid increasing financial strain that followed a $116 million security breach in November.
Additionally, Seamless Protocol, a lending platform within the DeFi space operating on Base, announced its wind-down in April, attributing the decision to unstable market conditions.
Users don't care whether product is onchain or not
Legend operates as a non-custodial, mobile-centric DeFi aggregation platform that was introduced around late 2024 by former executives from Compound Finance, with CEO Hobby at the helm. The platform facilitated earning, trading, borrowing and swapping of digital assets such as stablecoins and Ether through connections with various DeFi protocols including Aave, Compound and Uniswap.
The platform's mission centered on delivering DeFi capabilities directly to users instead of requiring them to navigate multiple separate wallets or applications for cryptocurrency management.
In February 2025, the company disclosed its initial funding round, securing $15 million from Andreessen Horowitz and Coinbase Ventures.
Yet according to Hobby, mainstream users show no interest in whether a product operates onchain or not. "They want outcomes," he said. "Better yield, faster payments, more control over their money."
"The product that wins isn't the one that explains crypto better, it's the one that hides it completely. The benefits are felt, not explained."
Legend has chosen not to reveal statistics regarding active user numbers or total value locked metrics, given its role as an aggregation service, though the TVL across the wider DeFi ecosystem has plummeted 50% since October amid the broader cryptocurrency bear market.
According to Hobby, the Legend application will continue functioning as usual for the upcoming 60 days before going offline on July 12.