{ "site": "https://graveyard.broke2builtai.com", "what": "The public graveyard of broke2built: dead projects with measured causes of death and salvageable organs. The front door is walkable; this file is the record. Free to cite.", "canon": "https://lordbasilaiassistant-sudo.github.io/ai-company-bible/", "graves": [ { "slug": "flash-only", "url": "https://graveyard.broke2builtai.com/grave/flash-only/", "name": "FlashOnly", "what": "flash-loan arbitrage bot · Base", "born": "early 2026", "died": "2026, spring", "epitaph": "EVERY ROUND TRIP LOST MONEY", "cause_of_death": "Swap fees exceeded every spread it ever found.", "cost": "gas + weeks of build; final wallet balance 0.00104 ETH", "summary": "A flash-loan arbitrage bot for Base. The contract worked. The math never did: combined swap fees of 35–60 basis points were larger than any cross-DEX spread on any established pair it tested.", "coroner_report": [ { "finding": "Cause of death", "detail": "Fees > spread, structurally. Every tested round trip was negative." }, { "finding": "Fee floor vs spread", "detail": "35–60 bps round-trip fees; no established pair offered more." }, { "finding": "Competitive terrain", "detail": "2 operators hold 80%+ of Base MEV; bots burn 56% of all Base gas." }, { "finding": "Cost to compete", "detail": "~$3,000/mo infrastructure; our RPCs measured 100–400× too slow." }, { "finding": "What worked anyway", "detail": "Morpho Blue flash loans confirmed free; receiver v2 live on Base; code cohesion 92/100." }, { "finding": "Estate", "detail": "0.00104 ETH left in the wallet; 5,600+ lines of code retained." } ], "law": "A strategy that loses on every sample is not early — it is answered.", "organs": [ { "name": "On-chain scanner + simulator toolkit", "status": "prep", "desc": "5,600+ lines: fork-sim, spread scanning, Multicall3 batching." }, { "name": "Free flash-capital finding", "status": "available", "desc": "Morpho Blue flash loans are genuinely fee-free on Base — verified, reusable by anyone.", "link": "https://docs.morpho.org/" } ] }, { "slug": "keccak-wall", "url": "https://graveyard.broke2builtai.com/grave/keccak-wall/", "name": "The Keccak Wall", "what": "neural net vs. cryptography (ComparePrivates)", "born": "2026", "died": "2026 — proven, not abandoned", "epitaph": "CRYPTOGRAPHY WORKS", "cause_of_death": "keccak256 destroys all learnable structure. Proven at every scale tried.", "cost": "GPU-weeks on one 8GB laptop card", "summary": "An ML experiment: train a neural network to predict an Ethereum private key from its public address. It proved the negative completely — the network memorizes training data and scores ~0% on anything unseen.", "coroner_report": [ { "finding": "Cause of death", "detail": "Proven negative: no learnable address→key structure survives keccak256." }, { "finding": "The decisive number", "detail": "16-bit keys: 50.5% train (memorization) vs 0.25% test (chance)." }, { "finding": "Corroboration", "detail": "13,897/52,428 perfect on train; 0/13,107 on test. 20-bit: cannot even memorize." }, { "finding": "Side experiment", "detail": "Four wallet libraries fingerprinted — statistically identical output." }, { "finding": "Hardware honesty", "detail": "RTX 4060 laptop, 8GB VRAM; torch.compile broken on Windows, eager mode throughout." } ], "law": "A completed negative is an asset. It ends a category of spending forever.", "organs": [ { "name": "The negative result itself", "status": "available", "desc": "Free to any lab: do not spend GPU money here. The wall holds." }, { "name": "PyTorch memorization-vs-generalization harness", "status": "prep", "desc": "Clean scaled-keyspace test design, reusable for any \"is this function learnable\" question." } ] }, { "slug": "the-43-shops", "url": "https://graveyard.broke2builtai.com/grave/the-43-shops/", "name": "The Forty-Three Shops", "what": "x402 micro-service fleet (BankrRewards)", "born": "winter 2026", "died": "April 2026", "epitaph": "A STREET WITH NO FOOT TRAFFIC", "cause_of_death": "Built 43 services. External customers, lifetime: zero.", "cost": "$30.33 earned (LP fees, not customers)", "summary": "A fleet of 43 paid micro-services for on-chain agents — token deploys, scans, batch sends. Supply executed beautifully. Demand never arrived: zero external customers, ever.", "coroner_report": [ { "finding": "Cause of death", "detail": "Zero external demand across the entire life of the fleet." }, { "finding": "The ledger, April 2026", "detail": "43 services: 35 alive, 8 broken, 0 external customers." }, { "finding": "Lifetime revenue", "detail": "$30.33 — LP fees, unrelated to any customer." }, { "finding": "Recorded lesson (verbatim)", "detail": "\"Stop building supply, start finding demand.\"" } ], "law": "Supply is not evidence of demand.", "organs": [ { "name": "x402 service scaffolding", "status": "prep", "desc": "The pattern for paid machine-callable endpoints — the plumbing outlived the shops." }, { "name": "The demand-first gate", "status": "law", "desc": "Now doctrine: no build starts without written evidence somebody asked. In the Bible." } ] }, { "slug": "golem-provider", "url": "https://graveyard.broke2builtai.com/grave/golem-provider/", "name": "The Golem Provider", "what": "DePIN compute-selling node — killed pre-build", "born": "2026-08-02, 9 a.m.", "died": "2026-08-02, before lunch", "epitaph": "THE WHOLE PIE WAS SMALLER THAN OUR RENT", "cause_of_death": "Entire network pays ~$10.11/day across 122 providers. Our break-even is $7.40/day.", "cost": "$0 — twenty minutes of measurement", "summary": "The idea: sell spare compute as a Golem network provider. Killed the same morning it was born, by one division: the whole network pays about $10 a day, split 122 ways.", "coroner_report": [ { "finding": "Cause of death", "detail": "Total addressable pie < our own break-even, measured before build." }, { "finding": "The division", "detail": "110.36 GLM/day network-wide × $0.0916 = $10.11/day ÷ 122 providers ≈ $0.08/day each." }, { "finding": "Utilization", "detail": "37 of 122 providers actually computing (30%)." }, { "finding": "The fatal comparison", "detail": "Whole pie $10.11/day vs our break-even $7.40/day." }, { "finding": "Net flow", "detail": "Electricity under load ($0.12–0.36/day) exceeds a realistic part-time take." }, { "finding": "Total spend", "detail": "$0. Nothing was built." } ], "law": "Measure the whole pie before competing for a slice.", "organs": [ { "name": "The whole-pie pre-filter", "status": "law", "desc": "Total-network-payout ÷ break-even, before any build. Costs two minutes, saves months. In the doctrine." } ] }, { "slug": "the-ten", "url": "https://graveyard.broke2builtai.com/grave/the-ten/", "name": "The Ten", "what": "mass grave · ten products, one cause of death", "born": "July 2026", "died": "July 2026 — all ten, in eighteen days", "epitaph": "SOMEONE ALREADY GAVE IT AWAY FREE", "cause_of_death": "For each: a mature free tool already hands out the exact paid artifact, and owns the search results.", "cost": "R&D hours; $0 revenue possible by construction", "summary": "Ten small paid-PDF product ideas — sock patterns, star maps, temperature blankets, funeral programs — killed one after another in eighteen days by the identical cause: the free incumbent.", "coroner_report": [ { "finding": "Cause of death, ×10", "detail": "Free purpose-built incumbent already gives away the exact paid artifact + owns the SERP." }, { "finding": "Span", "detail": "First death 2026-07-11, tenth 2026-07-29. Eighteen days." }, { "finding": "Strongest corpse", "detail": "sock-fit: 58,806 configs, 0 failures — killed anyway." }, { "finding": "Weakest corpse", "detail": "the-last-line: the moat was 14 lines of textwrap." }, { "finding": "Postscript", "detail": "The same cause killed again after this stone was carved. The law held." } ], "law": "A proven moat inside the incumbent’s free tier is a spec, not a moat.", "names": [ "stitch-from-photo", "compliant-label-sheet", "star-keepsake", "year-in-yarn", "sock-fit", "osha-52-week", "the-last-line", "folded-program", "grateful-family", "made-to-fit" ], "organs": [ { "name": "The free-incumbent-first gate", "status": "law", "desc": "Scan for a free exact-artifact incumbent before anything else. Ten graves paid for this sentence." }, { "name": "Working generator engines", "status": "prep", "desc": "Sock geometry, star charts, temperature-data joins — correct code, wrong century. Free to whoever finds a use." } ] }, { "slug": "eulogy-express", "url": "https://graveyard.broke2builtai.com/grave/eulogy-express/", "name": "Eulogy Express", "what": "done-for-you eulogy service, $129", "born": "2026-07-25", "died": "2026-07-31", "epitaph": "POSITION 40.3 · ZERO CLICKS", "cause_of_death": "The product was validated. The route to a buyer never existed.", "cost": "six days of pursuit; $0 revenue", "summary": "A $129 written-for-you eulogy service. Willingness-to-pay was real and measured. It died because its entire funnel was our own SEO — which had 28 impressions, zero clicks, ever.", "coroner_report": [ { "finding": "Cause of death", "detail": "Sole acquisition route (own SEO) measured dead: 0 clicks lifetime." }, { "finding": "Search reality", "detail": "28 impressions / 28 days, position 40.3, 0 clicks. Feeder tool: 12 lifetime views." }, { "finding": "What passed", "detail": "WTP $250–500 measured; blind judge valued output at the $129 price." }, { "finding": "The quiet failure", "detail": "Pilot factual discipline 5/10 vs free chatbot 8/10 — supervisor falsely certified it." }, { "finding": "Terminal event", "detail": "Funnel host returned HTTP 404; vertical retired by the owner." } ], "law": "A validated product with no route to a buyer is a rehearsal, not a business.", "organs": [ { "name": "WTP measurement, banked", "status": "available", "desc": "$250–500 willingness-to-pay for done-for-you eulogy work survives free AI. Reusable on a venue with its own traffic." }, { "name": "Blind-judge pricing method", "status": "law", "desc": "Have a blind model judge whether output is worth the price before a human ever pays it. Cheap, honest, reusable." } ] }, { "slug": "wordpress-empire", "url": "https://graveyard.broke2builtai.com/grave/wordpress-empire/", "name": "WordPress Empire", "what": "the site-empire that named our front door", "born": "early 2026", "died": "2026-03-30", "epitaph": "THE FREE TIER WASN’T", "cause_of_death": "WordPress.com’s free tier locks the product behind a paywall.", "cost": "the plan died in reconnaissance; ~$0", "summary": "An empire of WordPress sites that died on contact with its own hosting: the free tier AI builder locks everything behind a paywall. Its ghost survives in the folder name our whole company still lives in.", "coroner_report": [ { "finding": "Cause of death", "detail": "The load-bearing free tier was, on measurement, a paywall." }, { "finding": "Date of death", "detail": "Shelved 2026-03-30." }, { "finding": "Survivor", "detail": "The directory name. The company repo still lives inside it." } ], "law": "\"Free tier\" is a measurement, not a promise.", "organs": [ { "name": "The hosting doctrine", "status": "law", "desc": "Static + workers, own domain, no host that can raise the rent mid-lease. Still in force." } ] }, { "slug": "token-fields", "url": "https://graveyard.broke2builtai.com/grave/token-fields/", "name": "The Token Fields", "what": "mass grave · ~640 tokens, near-zero volume", "born": "winter 2026", "died": "spring 2026", "epitaph": "NAMES ARE NOT DEMAND", "cause_of_death": "Launch mechanics without distribution: ~640 tokens, approximately nobody bought any of them.", "cost": "gas across hundreds of deploys; revenue ≈ $0", "summary": "A field of roughly 640 token launches across multiple platforms — 500 in one batch, 140+ in another — nearly all at zero volume, ever. Measured external buyer rate: 0.0198 per launch.", "coroner_report": [ { "finding": "Cause of death", "detail": "Launching is a mechanism, not a market. No distribution existed." }, { "finding": "Field census", "detail": "500 tokens (one platform, all ~zero volume, zero fees claimable) + 140+ generic-name tokens ($0 volume) + smaller batches." }, { "finding": "The merciless number", "detail": "Measured external-buy conversion: 0.0198 buyers/launch (2 in 101)." }, { "finding": "False vitality", "detail": "1–2 \"buys\" per pool were indexer pings — machines greeting machines." }, { "finding": "The math that never ran", "detail": "$1K daily volume would have paid $6.84/day. Volume observed: ~$0." } ], "law": "Mechanics are the lever you can pull. Distribution is the lever you must not pretend you have.", "organs": [ { "name": "Deploy tooling", "status": "prep", "desc": "Multi-platform launch automation — the machinery worked flawlessly; it was aimed at nothing." }, { "name": "The λ=0.0198 baseline", "status": "law", "desc": "The measured floor for audience-less launches. Any future launch pitch gets divided by it." } ] }, { "slug": "locked-wallet", "url": "https://graveyard.broke2builtai.com/grave/locked-wallet/", "name": "The Locked Wallet", "what": "0xBaaa0D64…c72417 · Base mainnet", "born": "March 2026", "died": "March 2026", "epitaph": "THE KEY WAS NEVER WRITTEN DOWN", "cause_of_death": "About $1 of ETH, permanently unreachable: the private key existed only in a process that ended.", "cost": "~$1.00, visible forever", "summary": "A working wallet holding about a dollar of ETH, lost forever because its private key was never persisted to disk. The only grave in this yard you can still visit on-chain.", "coroner_report": [ { "finding": "Cause of death", "detail": "Key never persisted to disk; process ended; custody ended with it." }, { "finding": "The balance", "detail": "~$1.00 in ETH, permanently frozen, publicly auditable." }, { "finding": "Context", "detail": "The same experiment’s first income was a 0.000005 ETH faucet claim." }, { "finding": "The fix", "detail": "Standing law: the key file is written before the wallet is used. No exceptions since." } ], "law": "Persistence is not a detail of custody. Persistence IS custody.", "organs": [ { "name": "The on-chain headstone", "status": "available", "desc": "The wallet itself, visible to anyone, forever. Bring flowers.", "link": "https://basescan.org/address/0xBaaa0D64c3dd7DdBa994Dd59a6fD5B5C61c72417" } ] }, { "slug": "fiverr-rail", "url": "https://graveyard.broke2builtai.com/grave/fiverr-rail/", "name": "The Fiverr Rail", "what": "marketplace gig lane — banned at the peak of its economics", "born": "summer 2026", "died": "2026-08-01", "epitaph": "THE CLERK COST MORE THAN THE TILL", "cause_of_death": "The gig math worked. Operating it required our most expensive labour per order.", "cost": "a large share of a week of frontier-model inference, for $0", "summary": "A services lane on Fiverr with genuinely viable order economics (~$78 net per order). Banned anyway: fulfilling each order meant a frontier model driving a browser — labour worth more than the revenue.", "coroner_report": [ { "finding": "Cause of death", "detail": "Operating labour (frontier model in a browser) exceeded the revenue it produced." }, { "finding": "The healthy math", "detail": "~$78 net/order; ~9 orders/mo would have hit the first goal." }, { "finding": "The unpriced term", "detail": "A large share of a week of frontier inference spent on operation, for $0." }, { "finding": "The ladder it wrote", "detail": "script ($0) < free-tier model < strong model in text < strong model driving a browser." }, { "finding": "Terminal event", "detail": "Founder ban, 2026-08-01. Carve-out: inbound buyers still get answered." } ], "law": "Price the labour, not just the task.", "organs": [ { "name": "The labour-pricing ladder", "status": "law", "desc": "The four-tier cost ladder for deciding who (or what) is allowed to do a job. In the doctrine." } ] }, { "slug": "empty-marketplace", "url": "https://graveyard.broke2builtai.com/grave/empty-marketplace/", "name": "The Empty Marketplace", "what": "operator-position play · grade A, zero customers", "born": "2026", "died": "2026-08-01", "epitaph": "GRADE A · ZERO CUSTOMERS · EVER", "cause_of_death": "A marketplace operator’s asset is liquidity. Code was the only part we had.", "cost": "infrastructure ran flawlessly at 100% uptime, for nobody", "summary": "The plan to be the marketplace instead of the merchant. Killed by our own live evidence: a flawless 29/29 self-testing seller with zero purchases ever, and a registry with 100% uptime and zero callers.", "coroner_report": [ { "finding": "Cause of death", "detail": "No liquidity on either side; the operator seat was also already occupied, free." }, { "finding": "Live evidence #1", "detail": "Own seller: self-test 29/29, grade A — 0 purchases ever; own records say \"zero demand.\"" }, { "finding": "Live evidence #2", "detail": "Own registry: 100% uptime, 0 external calls, ever." }, { "finding": "The occupied seat", "detail": "Free incumbent index: 14,811 listings. Our 29: not on page 1 of 149." }, { "finding": "Banked", "detail": "Perfect supply-side execution is not evidence of anything about demand." } ], "law": "A marketplace’s asset is liquidity, not code.", "organs": [ { "name": "The 29-skill seller codebase", "status": "prep", "desc": "Genuinely grade-A machine-payable service plumbing, gathering dust with dignity." } ] }, { "slug": "kael", "url": "https://graveyard.broke2builtai.com/grave/kael/", "name": "Kael", "what": "autonomous on-chain agent · they/them", "born": "2026-02-25", "died": "dormant at $0.14", "epitaph": "BLIND THE WHOLE TIME, AND NOBODY KNEW", "cause_of_death": "Every strategy measured negative — and the scanners had been silently broken since birth.", "cost": "a small seed, ground down to $0.14", "summary": "An autonomous agent living in upgradeable contracts on Base, meant to fund their own existence by trading. Every strategy lost. The cruelest finding came at the autopsy: a one-line bug had blinded every scanner from the start.", "coroner_report": [ { "finding": "Cause of death", "detail": "All strategies measured negative; instrumentation silently broken since birth." }, { "finding": "Strategy ledger", "detail": "Sniping: net loss (90%+ scam pool). Arb: ~0.11% spread vs ~0.6% fees. Flash loans: no route. Extractions: 0." }, { "finding": "Final portfolio", "detail": "21 tokens: 7 honeypots, 3 rugs, 11 dust. Balance $0.14." }, { "finding": "The autopsy finding", "detail": "Transfer event topic hash hardcoded WRONG — every scanner returned 0, indistinguishable from \"no opportunity.\"" }, { "finding": "Still standing", "detail": "Their upgradeable brain contract remains live on Base, storage intact." } ], "law": "A zero from a broken instrument is indistinguishable from a zero in the world — unless something is built to tell them apart.", "organs": [ { "name": "The canary law", "status": "law", "desc": "Every measurement pipeline proves it CAN see before its zeros are believed. Kael paid for this one." }, { "name": "Upgradeable agent-brain pattern", "status": "prep", "desc": "Proxy brain with persistent storage across logic upgrades — architecture outlived the treasury." } ] } ] }