Teleport, the Solana-based Uber and Lyft competitor, is shutting down, the company announced on Thursday.
“This is not the outcome we had hoped for, but we’re incredibly grateful for this community and everyone who believed in the vision and showed up with enthusiasm,” the company wrote. “Your support meant everything. Thank you for believing in us, and we’re sorry we didn’t find a way to make this business work!”
The company’s website now redirects to a message alerting users of the winddown. The app will provide off-ramping support until Feb. 28 so users can receive their remaining USDC stablecoin balances and private keys.
“We’re hoping to post a more detailed analysis of what led to this decision in the future, but for now we’re focused on an orderly wind down,” the company said.
Early crypto investor and former Dropbox coder Paul Bohm founded Teleport in 2022 amid booming interest in so-called “dePIN” projects. These “Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks,” like internet provider Helium, are attempts to bring crypto offline and into the real world.
Teleport used a reward system inspired by Bitcoin's mining rewards, which rewarded early adopters with Compressed NFTs on Solana.
In a previous interview, Bohm noted the app spread through “permissionless marketing.”
“Instead of spending corporate budget on acquiring drivers and writers we give other people the tools to recruit each other,” he said.
The idea was to reduce ride-sharing costs and boost drivers' revenues by creating a more efficient bidding market on its transparent and open Rideshare Protocol.
The Decentralized Engineering Corporation that built the app raised $9 million in a seed funding round co-led by Steve Vassallo at Foundation Capital and Thomas Bailey at Road Capital.
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