The closure of the privacy-focused protocol Nocturne was announced by the company just four months after discontinuing the protocol itself.
Nocturne, known for its development of a privacy-oriented protocol for Ethereum, is shutting down less than a year after receiving $6 million in funding from Bain Capital Crypto, Polychain Capital, and Vitalik Buterin.
In a recent announcement on Jun. 5, the Nocturne team revealed that the application’s website will remain open for withdrawals until the end of June. Following the deadline, the withdrawal process will transition to a self-serve format through a GitHub repository. No reason was provided for the shutdown.
The decision to close comes after Nocturne’s choice in February to shut down the v1 version of the protocol and focus on “a new product in the application space.” The team mentioned the early stage of the layer-2 ecosystem as a factor in the protocol’s closure, underscoring that the shift to public layer-2 networks “must precede privacy.”
Nocturne aimed to facilitate private accounts on the Ethereum network, enabling users to conduct cryptocurrency transactions in private.
Back in October 2023, Nocturne raised $6 million in a seed round led by Bain Capital Crypto and Polychain Capital, with support from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and other members of the Ethereum community. At that time, the team planned to utilize the funds for deploying and advancing private accounts on Ethereum.
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