Study · why Lights On exists
30 of 33 hackathon builds on Base showed no detected commit or deploy activity in the last 30 nights.
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 onlyquietActive 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
| Project | Live app answers* | Public repo | History coverage | Active in last 30 nights | Last activity |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Onetoken | yes | no | no public history | unknown | unknown |
| Agent Verse | no | no | no public history | unknown | unknown |
| Corvo Edge | yes | no | no public history | unknown | unknown |
| aHand | yes | yes | full window | no | |
| AIDOL | yes | no | no public history | unknown | unknown |
| EventChain | yes | yes | full window | no | |
| exSafe | yes | yes | full window | no | none seen |
| FutureRoots | yes | no | no public history | unknown | unknown |
| Grayl AI | yes | yes | full window | no | none seen |
| Lineage | no | no | no public history | unknown | unknown |
* 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
- Aave Interface4 nights
- base.org8 nights
- Revoke.cash2 nights
- Safe{Wallet}2 nights
- Uniswap Interface4 nights
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.tsIt 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.