Clockwork, a project to automate smart contracts based on Solana, is preparing to shut down its key infrastructure by the end of October. This decision comes only one year after securing $4 million in an initial funding round led by venture capital firms Multicoin Capital and Asymmetric, with additional participation from Solana Ventures. Founder Nick Garfield announced on August 27th via a series of tweets that active development of the protocol would cease.
This news comes amidst a series of closures in the Solana ecosystem, including decentralized finance platforms Friktion and Everlend Finance earlier this year, and the non-fungible token protocol Cardinal in late June.
Cost vs Opportunity: Calculated Exit of Clockwork
Nick Garfield cited a “simple cost of opportunity” as the reason for winding down Clockwork. According to Garfield, there were few business benefits to supporting the project, and the team is increasingly interested in other potential ventures. Clockwork, designed to facilitate scheduled transactions on the Solana network and automate smart contracts triggered by specific events, will be disabling its nodes on the devnet and mainnet starting from October 31st. Despite the shutdown, the code base will remain open-source and accessible to the public. Garfield has given his “full blessing to fork” to anyone interested in continuing the development of the protocol.
In an interactive session with users, Garfield clarified that a “significant portion” of the $4 million from the initial fund remains intact. However, he expressed that decisions regarding returning the investment to stakeholders would be postponed for a period of time.
