Study · why Lights On exists

30 of 33 hackathon builds on Base showed no detected commit or deploy activity in the last 30 nights.

reconstructed history (git + Wayback), not attestedas of 30-night window: →

Lights On checks every night whether a project's work reached users. Before the watch began, each project's recent history was rebuilt from its public repo and from Wayback captures of its live app, to see what happens after a hackathon. Quiet means no verified change seen, nothing more.

Who is still lit

shippedcommits onlyquiet
Hackathon builds on Base
Reference appsUniswap Interface, Aave Interface, CoW Swap and others
Vibestarter raises
Vibeathon 01 finalists with history6 of 10 have no usable public history and are not drawn

Active means a commit, or a detected deploy, release or contract deploy, in the window. Shipped means the deploy, release or contract deploy was detected. One window per project with a full window; projects without one are not drawn and never counted as quiet.

8 of 8 big reference apps showed detected commit or deploy activity in the last 30 nights, against 3 of 33 hackathon builds.

Vibeathon 01, 99 days later

Of the 10 Vibeathon 01 finalists, 0 showed detected commit or deploy activity in the last 30 nights, 4 could be checked, and 6 have no usable public history (99 days after the results).

8 of 10 live apps still answer

Vibeathon 01, 99 days later: the finalists, their live apps, public repos, history coverage and activity
ProjectLive app answers*Public repoHistory coverageActive in last 30 nightsLast activity
Onetokenyesnono public historyunknownunknown
Agent Versenonono public historyunknownunknown
Corvo Edgeyesnono public historyunknownunknown
aHandyesyesfull windowno
AIDOLyesnono public historyunknownunknown
EventChainyesyesfull windowno
exSafeyesyesfull windownonone seen
FutureRootsyesnono public historyunknownunknown
Grayl AIyesyesfull windownonone seen
Lineagenonono public historyunknownunknown

* liveUp = HTTP probe of 2026-11-05T23:47:18.200366+00:00 answered 2xx/3xx; says nothing about whether the app works or is maintained

Commit graphs vs shipping

5 of 46 projects with a full 30-night window had commits but no detected deploy.

has building nights in the last 30 but zero shipped nights: commits seen, no deploy detected

5 projects shipped on nights with no code commits

nights shipped by a deploy, release or contract deploy with no code commits that night (full 30-night windows only)

A commit graph would call the first group active and the second idle; Lights On checks what reached users.

Method and limits

Basis
reconstructed history (git + Wayback), not attested
Windows
only projects with >= 25 non-unavailable nights in the last 30 are counted; unavailable rows never count as coverage
Reproduce
pnpm tsx scripts/study.ts

It reads the watch database and rewrites results/*.json; the README and this page are rendered from those files. Source: scripts/study.ts on GitHub.

From now on
From 2026-11-06 on, nights are observed and attested on Base; the study is recomputed as observed nights accumulate.
Limits
  • Quiet means no verified change seen in the public repo, the live app or the listed contracts. It does not mean a team has stopped.
  • Private repos are invisible to us, so a team that ships from one can read quiet while it is busy.
  • Reconstructed nights are labelled as such and never attested.

How reconstructed history is builtLast night's shift