DEX Backed by Pantera Capital and Y Combinator Goes out of Business
By Marko Vidrih on The Capital
Sparkswap, a decentralized exchange (DEX) that raised $3.5 million from Initialized Capital, Pantera Capital, Foundation Capital and Y Combinator, announced the closure.
Sparkswap founder Trey Griffith said the number of users is not enough to maintain the business:
“Unfortunately, we weren’t able to build a large enough audience to sustain the business over the long term. Building a cryptocurrency business, especially one that interacts with the fiat banking system, is an expensive endeavor, and as it stands right now the style of self-custody we were espousing is too niche to make our business sustainable.”
The exchange has stopped registering new users and will stop trading on March 24; Sparkswap plans to shut down its Lightning Network node by the end of the month.
Griffith said that he still believes in the potential of decentralized exchanges and hopes that the failure of Sparkswap is related to implementation time and such projects will become more popular in the future. Sparkswap code will remain open to those who want to contribute to the development of Bitcoin and the Lightning Network.
The beta version of the exchange was launched in April last year. Sparkswap is the first DEX powered by Lightning Network technology.
Author: Marko Vidrih
Featured image credit: Pixabay
