A crypto news brand just changed hands, and nobody knows who bought it

@dlnews, once the editorial arm of DeFi data platform @DefiLlama, has quietly changed hands. The outlet shut down in May 2026, but its website and X account are now being run by a new, unidentified owner. @DefiLlama has confirmed the handover while making clear it has no involvement whatsoever.

A Troubled Exit and an Opaque Sale

DL News launched in late 2022 as the editorial arm of DefiLlama, one of the most widely used data dashboards in decentralized finance. It was built with ambitions to raise the standard of crypto journalism, but the road was rocky from early on. A major conflict within DefiLlama in early 2023 left DL News effectively separated from its sister company, with minimal communication for the next two years. DL News kept the DefiLlama name and identity but lost access to its much larger audience and distribution network.

The DefiLlama-born newsroom grew revenue 270% in 2025 and crossed seven figures in annual sales, but it was not enough to survive an industry where AI is eating search traffic and audiences are shrinking fast. Traffic across crypto and tech media contracted severely, and AI accelerated the collapse of search distribution while enabling waves of parasitic aggregation. The outlet announced its closure at the end of May.

That broader pressure on crypto-native media is well documented. Last year, traffic to crypto-native media fell even as activity across the crypto economy remained strong, suggesting that people were increasingly following the industry through channels beyond specialist media.

DefiLlama Tried to Kill the Brand. It Couldn't.

What makes the situation more unusual is what happened after the shutdown. According to @DefiLlama, the analytics team attempted to acquire and retire the DL News brand after the closure, but was unable to do so. The reason: the DL News name belonged to Llama Corp, a separate Dubai-registered entity, not the analytics team itself. That left the door open for an outside buyer to step in.

New, unidentified owners have now taken over the site and the X account. @DefiLlama says it has zero involvement with whoever is now running the outlet. Core developer @0xngmi went further, publicly warning users not to trust anything published under the DL News name going forward. With the brand now in unknown hands and its original team long departed, that is a warning worth heeding.

The episode raises an uncomfortable question for the crypto media industry: when a newsroom shuts down, who is responsible for what comes next under its name?

Sources:
TheStreet Crypto: DL News shuts down after three years
Talking Biz News: Crypto news site DL News is closing
Crypto.news: Crypto-native media lost 33% of traffic in 2025