The graveyard · Detection methodology
The registry currently tracks 10 crypto prop firms — living ones included — by DNS resolution, HTTP status and a manual read of the live page, every check dated. A death count is only citable if the rules that produce it are published. These are the rules.
Registry last verified · the count · changelog · JSON (CC-BY 4.0)
A firm enters the census only if it publicly sold evaluations or funded accounts for at least 30 days through a working purchase flow. Landing pages, waitlists and announced-but-unlaunched products never enter the count — a census inflated with vaporware would be worthless.
DNS resolution dropped; persistent HTTP failure (5xx, 402, or a redirect to a domain-parking page); the domain listed for sale; official Discord or X account deleted or silent while payouts are reported stopped; an on-chain contract central to the model showing no activity where activity is required. Trader reports alone never classify a firm — they only trigger a technical check.
One failed check marks a firm 'at risk', never dead. Reclassification to dead requires the signal to persist across two dated checks at least 7 days apart — except for unambiguous signals: a DNS record gone for 14+ days, or a domain openly parked for sale with no alternative official domain, classify on the second confirmation.
A verdict must name the exact domain checked, and before classifying we search the firm's official socials and docs for alternative domains. This rule exists because we broke it: on 10 August 2026 we marked Carrot Funding dead after checking carrotfunding.com — a parked lookalike — while the firm operated normally on carrotfunding.io. The correction is public in the changelog.
The headline count adds dead firms and unproven relaunches. A firm whose original platform ceased operating counts as gone dark even if a new landing page later appears under its name: the platform that took traders' money no longer exists, and a waitlist page does not resurrect it.
It never silently exits. A dead firm that returns is reclassified 'relaunching (unproven)' and only becomes active again after we verify a post-return payout or a working, tested purchase flow. Its history — including the dark period — stays in the registry and the changelog permanently.
Every check is dated. When a verdict changes — including when we were wrong — we add a new dated entry and a changelog line with the proof. The registry's value is that its history is append-only.
The registry is machine-readable at /api/registry.json (and CSV), licensed CC-BY 4.0: cite “Roya Trading” with a link to the graveyard and reuse freely. An embeddable live counter is available: <script src="https://roya-trading.com/embed/counter.js"></script>
