Solana’s Cardinal protocol just announced its decision to wind down operations and shut down, citing economic conditions. Cardinal Starts 2-Months “Notice Period” Nearly a year after raising $4.4 million, Solana’s NFT utility provider, Cardinal Labs, has decided to pack it in. The protocol was launched in early 2022 as an infrastructure provider to improve NFT utility on the Solana network. However, on Wednesday, the Cardinal team took to Twitter to announce that they would be winding down operations and eventually shut shop. They wrote, “Today is the first day of our 2 month “notice period” (6/28-8/26) during which we recommend any and all depositors of assets into our systems manually withdraw them. All of our website product UIs will remain live during the period so that no one should have any issue doing so.” “Product Market Fit Difficult” The team tweeted that the macroeconomic conditions have been very challenging for the protocol. They claimed that product market fit has been difficult, and although there has been some usage of the protocol’s staking, rentals, and identity products, the market has not scaled up as they had hoped it would. Until blockchain tech adoption happens on a larger scale, the protocol’s offerings are “stuck in the context of the crypto maximalist community.” The team also noted that the code behind the protocol will always be open source and accessible by all, even after the deployments are no longer live. They also reassured users that their assets were safe and would be returned to owners by the end of the process. Wind Down Schedule August 26 would mark the end of the two-month notice period, so users will need to complete all withdrawals by that date. The team has also dropped the closing schedule, which revealed that activities like creating staking pools, token management, NFT rentals and rental extensions, management of social media handles, and new deposits would be suspended on July 19. The team tweeted, “As we move towards closing up shop, our focus now shifts to carrying out a wind down as smoothly as possible so that the Solana ecosystem doesn’t skip a beat…We realize that many people and teams rely on our protocols, and we want to minimize the impact of this transition on the ecosystem as much as possible, so we’ve worked deliberately to find a path that does just that.” Another Solana Project Shuts Down Twitter user and crypto expert JagoeCapital pointed out that Solana-related protocols are not faring well in the market. They tweeted, “Cardinal announced a $4.4 Million raise just 11 months ago led by Solana Ventures and ProtagonistXYZ with headline participation from Alameda Research, Animoca Brands and Delphi Digital. Today they announced they will be shutting down. It’s becoming a common theme with Solana projects.” Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.
