Clockwork Winding Down Smart Contract Engine

Clockwork, an open-source automation engine for the Solana blockchain, has called timeout.

Founder Nick Garfield said on Twitter Sunday (Aug. 27) that the company was stepping away “from active development of the protocol,” with plans to close down Oct. 31.

Hi all, bittersweet news today.

The team and I behind @clockwork_xyz have decided to step away from active development of the protocol.

1/

— Nick (@time_composer) August 27, 2023

“Ultimately the reason we are stepping away now is simple opportunity cost,” he said. “We admittedly see limited commercial upside in continuing to develop the protocol, and have a growing personal interest to explore new opportunities.”

According to its website, developers can employ Clockwork to schedule transactions and create “automated, event-driven smart-contracts.”

Smart contracts, as covered here previously, are “the building blocks of decentralized finance.” They are computer protocols designed to digitally facilitate, verify or enforce contracts and permit credible transactions without third parties.

“Smart contracts have a number of advantages, notably that they cannot be changed or canceled once set, and transactions — although not the details or identities — are publicly recorded on a blockchain like Ethereum,” PYMNTS wrote last year in a look at the technology’s use in mortgage transactions.

This makes them “trustless” — which means parties don’t need a trusted third party like a bank or escrow service in terms of handling money. 

“Smart contracts also generally pass the good funds requirement that funds are immediately available to the title company on deposit,” that report said. “Because those rules allow a waiting period, smart contracts fit the bill because they are immutable so the buyer cannot take the funds back or prevent the seller from taking possession.”

After Clockwork shutters on Halloween, Garfield said, the company’s code will remain open-source and free to access on GitHub.

“Where Clockwork goes from here is up to you!” he wrote. “The beauty of crypto is that it is truly open and permissionless. If you have a vision for improving the protocol, you have our full endorsement to fork and ship it.”

Meanwhile, the true value of blockchain technology in payments still remains untapped, Jorn Lambert, Chief Digital Officer at Mastercard, told PYMNTS last month.

“Until there exists the ability to actually develop financially-regulated applications on the blockchain, the benefits will never go mainstream,” Lambert said. “Regulated financial institutions are crucial for [tokenized blockchain money movement vehicles] to truly scale.”