What? That has nothing at all to do with the reason the domain expired. It has been in a predicament for a while, site admins lost contact with the owner of the domain name. This has been coming for some time.
Nahh - further back, before they could even be defederated, they spent first years voluntarily isolating themselves from the larger fediverse. Just surprising is all, I was under the impression hexbear was very self sustaining.
Edit- looking like this wasn't intentional, explains a lot.