The team behind the smart contract automation platform cited “limited commercial upside” in continuing to develop the protocol.

Clockwork, an open-source automation engine for the Solana blockchain, plans to shut down its nodes on its developer net and mainnet on Oct. 31. 

“The on-chain programs will be frozen, and the code will remain open-source and free to fork on GitHub,” said Clockwork founder Nick Garfield, in a series of X posts.

Ultimately the reason we are stepping away now is simple opportunity cost.

We admittedly see limited commercial upside in continuing to develop the protocol, and have a growing personal interest to explore new opportunities.

5/

— Nick (@time_composer) August 27, 2023

Garfield said the decision was driven by a lack of commercial upside in continuing the protocol’s development, but welcomed any developers with a vision for Clockwork to fork and ship it.

“For those who currently rely on Clockwork, we will do what we can to ensure continued service. Understand this process is an accelerated transition to full decentralization. Its success will depend on you and the will of the Solana community,” said Garfield. 

Clockwork allows users to schedule transactions on Solana and create smart contracts that are automated to run applications that can be triggered by a certain event. The team behind the project raised $4 million in seed funding from Multicoin Capital, Solana Ventures and Asymmetric VC.

According to Garfield, a meaningful portion of that funding still remains with the project.

“Fully shutting down is an option, but I need to take a minute to reset myself before deciding one way or the other,” he said on X, when one user asked whether the money would be returned to investors.

In January, another Solana-based project Friktion announced it would be shutting down its platform, citing a “tough market” for DeFi growth over the last few months.