DEAD TOKENS

Policy 2026-07-11.1

How we measure
public silence.

No source can prove a team’s motive, private communication or complete absence. This protocol makes a narrower claim: silence on verified, monitored public channels through a stated UTC time.

Operational definition

Publicly silent

A configurable threshold—default 180 days—has elapsed since the newest meaningful, project-originated event across every discovered applicable official channel; at least two channel families were checked, one is communicative, and an active contradiction search found no successor or newer event.

01

Clarify the question before counting

The auditable universe is the union of provider listings successfully snapshotted on a named date. It is not “all crypto projects.” Assets, tokens, projects, wrappers and contracts are not interchangeable, and permissionless creation makes the universe change continuously.

Verified fact

A native event happened at a preserved timestamp on a channel whose ownership is established.

Reasonable inference

The monitored public surfaces appear quiet after the newest qualifying event.

Speculation

The team abandoned investors, stopped private work or intended to disappear.

Unresolved unknown

A deleted timeline, private group, inaccessible domain or possible successor cannot be checked.

02

Verification workflow

  1. 1

    Snapshot the provider universe

    Capture active, inactive and untracked inventories where terms permit. Record pagination, errors, adapter version and a raw snapshot hash.

  2. 2

    Resolve the project identity

    Canonicalize by chain and contract or native-chain identity. Provider IDs and aliases remain attached; ticker alone is never sufficient.

  3. 3

    Prove channel ownership

    Use reciprocal official links, stable account/repository IDs, archived historical links and contract continuity. Aggregators copying one URL are one provenance chain.

  4. 4

    Preserve raw evidence

    Store native IDs, timestamps, URLs, retrieval time, content hashes and lawful archives. Excluded events stay in the ledger with a reason.

  5. 5

    Try to falsify silence

    Search for a newer marginal event, successor, migration, transferred repository, account rename or different-language community.

  6. 6

    Compute and review

    Use the latest plausible qualifying time, score identity/timestamp/coverage separately, and require human review before a strong label.

03

Exact-day rule

complete days = floor((as-of UTC − last activity UTC) ÷ 86,400 seconds)

These are complete 24-hour periods, not calendar days. Native timestamps can produce one exact integer. A source that supplies only a date becomes a one-day range. An archive capture proves content existed by the capture time; it does not prove the edit time.

734 daysNative exact timestamp
733–734 daysDate only; interval preserved
≥ 733 daysOnly a defensible lower bound
UnresolvedCritical history incomplete

04

Meaningful activity, separated from noise

Include

  • Product, release, security, governance or roadmap updates
  • Substantive replies from verified team members or maintainers
  • Material maintainer commits, releases or reviewed pull requests
  • Dated first-party documentation or changelog updates

Exclude

  • Price posts, reposts, generic greetings, giveaways and automated market feeds
  • Copyright-year, DNS, TLS, CDN or cache-header changes
  • Dependency bots, empty commits and version-only churn without reviewed substance
  • Third-party mentions, unaffiliated forks and anonymous community claims

05

Attack the leading explanation

Before publication, search project name, aliases, every contract, old and new domains, founders, maintainers and stable account IDs with migration vocabulary. Follow redirects and repository transfers. Check alternate forges, governance, Medium/Substack, Telegram, Discord, Farcaster and non-English channels.

A live market does not prove a team is active. A stopped market does not prove a team is silent. A live domain does not prove its original owner still controls it.

06

Confidence is the weakest link

I

Identity

Is this the right asset, lineage and project-controlled channel?

T

Timestamp

Is the event time native, exact and resistant to backdating or archive ambiguity?

C

Coverage

Were all discovered applicable histories checked through the as-of time?

Overall confidence is the minimum of the three dimensions. High-confidence silence needs verified identity, complete channel histories, two families including communication, a negative contradiction search, a fresh review and ideally a second reviewer.

07

Known failure modes

Active

A recent, meaningful first-party event is verified.

Publicly silent

Every discovered applicable public channel was checked; no newer event or successor was found.

Possibly silent

Evidence points to silence, but one or more histories, identities or channels remain incomplete.

Explicitly ceased

A verified primary source records shutdown, retirement or legally compelled cessation.

Migrated / rebranded

The old identity is quiet because work continues under a verified successor.

Maintenance mode

Low cadence may be appropriate for stable, feature-complete software.

Unresolved

Evidence conflicts, critical sources are inaccessible, or identity cannot be established.

X exposes only a bounded recent timeline in standard access; GitHub’s default commit endpoint can miss other branches and forges; HTTP metadata rarely dates a meaningful website change; private investor communication is not auditable. Each limitation is kept visible rather than converted into certainty.

Inspect provider definitions and source constraints →