- Cardinal Protocol, the Solana blockchain-based non-fungible token (NFT) platform, is set to wind down operations due to challenging economic conditions.
- Despite securing $5.2 million in funding and having over 65,000 NFTs staked on the platform, the Cardinal Protocol has faced difficulties in achieving a market fit.
The Cardinal Protocol, Solana’s innovative NFT platform, renowned for introducing the concept of “conditional ownership,” has announced its decision to cease operations. Citing challenging economic conditions as the primary reason for this decision, the team shared the news through their social media channels.
Hey Everyone, we have some unfortunate news to share 🙁
After a lot of reflection, we’ve decided to begin the process of winding down our protocols. Let's dive into it 🧵 ⬇️
— Cardinal (@cardinal_labs) June 28, 2023
Successful in its fundraising endeavors, the Cardinal Protocol secured $4.4 million to enhance the functionality of NFTs on Solana. This seed funding round witnessed participation from eminent cryptocurrency venture firms Protagonist and Solana Ventures, as well as from other industry stalwarts including Animoca Brands, Delphi Digital, CMS Holdings, and Alameda Research.
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Cardinal Labs played an instrumental role in promoting the growth of NFTs on the Solana network. They dedicated their resources to advancing NFT use cases by providing a variety of protocols and software development kits (SDKs). These tools, enabling functionalities such as staking, rentals, subscriptions, royalties, and trading, formed the bedrock of the Cardinal ecosystem.
Despite these funding efforts, the financial circumstances for the Cardinal Protocol remained unaltered. A spokesperson from Solana Cardinal clarified that the investment from Alameda Research represented a relatively small portion of the funding round and was not a contributing factor to the protocol’s financial woes.
Furthermore, Cardinal secured an additional $750,000 in pre-seed funding from Neo Ventures in 2021, bringing their total funding to a substantial $5.2 million over 18 months. Nevertheless, the pace of blockchain technology adoption across various industries remained slow, creating obstacles in achieving product-market fit and usage of their offerings beyond the crypto maximalist community.
As part of their winding-down process, the Cardinal team has advised users to manually withdraw their assets from the platform. From July 19, the protocol will stop accepting new deposits, and functionalities including stake pool creation, token manager creation, name linking, and NFT rentals will be disabled. After the withdrawal period ending on August 26, any remaining assets will be forcibly returned to the depositors’ address.
Despite the closure of the Cardinal Protocol, the evolution of the NFT market continues, offering new opportunities and challenges in the blockchain landscape.
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