The crumble of Glass Protocol, a promising crypto venture backed by investors such as TCG Crypto and 1kx, strikes a sobering note in the NFT space. In apparent capitulation to the prevailing bear market, founders Sam Sends and Varun Iyer revealed their decision to conclude active development of the platform on social media platform X.
Taking the centerpiece of their ambitious project were digital, tradeable video NFTs, a novelty they hoped to ride on to financial success. The founders envisioned it as a tool providing content creators with a platform to mint and sell videos, potentially generating higher earnings than conventional platforms like YouTube. The added incentive of blockchain transparency and permanence added to its allure, as it assured a decentralized storage system for users’ videos.
This solid plan, however, confronted a harsh reality; the demand for these special breed of NFT’s proved regrettably meager. The broader impact of the overall downturn in crypto trading, more pronounced within the NFT space, hit the two-and-a-half-year-old start-up hard. Sales numbers fall sharply for all on-chain collectibles, but smaller projects like Glass Protocol face an even tougher time to ignite substantial interest.
Moving forward, while the NFT’s created through the platform will remain in existence alongside the website and protocol, the factor of future growth appears bleak, given the cessation of the founders’ contribution.
Switching focus to blockchain aspects, Glass Protocol saw a swing from Ethereum to Solana, before reverting back to its original platform, Ethereum. This move took place in the course of recent months, a significant pivot which may have implications on the blockchain sector as a whole.
Nevertheless, while the setback casts doubt on the video NFT market, the insistence of Sends in a November 2021 podcast that their goal was “to help everyone profit” and “express, own, and share what they value,” points to the genuine belief in the potential of NFTs and crypto technology. Thus, despite Glass Protocol’s fall, the spirit of utilising technology to democratise access to value creation lives on – serving as an instructional tale of both the extraordinary possibilities, and hair-raising risks within the crypto universe.
Source: Coindesk
