The creators of Clockwork, a Solana-based smart contract automation project, have announced their decision to shut down crucial infrastructure for the protocol at the end of October, attributing the move to a “lack of commercial viability.”
Clockwork founder, Nick Garfield, communicated through a series of tweets on August 27 that active development of the protocol will cease, and its nodes on both the devnet and mainnet will be turned off on October 31.
Garfield identified “simple opportunity cost” as the rationale behind the team’s withdrawal from Clockwork, acknowledging the limited commercial advantages of its continued development and a growing interest among the team to pursue other avenues.
Clockwork is designed to enable users to schedule transactions on the Solana network and to construct smart contracts programmed to initiate applications upon the occurrence of a specific event.
Garfield indicated that the Clockwork code will remain open-source and accessible online, and he fully supported any efforts to “fork and ship” by those interested in perpetuating the protocol’s development. According to Crunchbase, Clockwork secured $4 million in a seed funding round last August, jointly led by Multicoin Capital and Asymmetric, with additional participation from Solana Ventures. When questioned by a Twitter user about the possibility of refunding the seed investment, Garfield revealed that a significant portion of the funds was still available but that a decision on its allocation would be made at a later date.
The discontinuation of Clockwork follows the closure of other Solana protocols, including the decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms Friktion in January and Everlend Finance the following month.
Additionally, in late June, the Solana-based non-fungible token (NFT) protocol, Cardinal, announced its wind-down due to economic challenges, despite having raised $4.4 million approximately a year prior.
Get $200 Free Bitcoins every hour! No Deposit No Credit Card required. Sign Up