The developers behind the Solana-based smart contract automation project Clockwork are set to turn off key infrastructure for the protocol at the end of October, citing “limited commercial upside."

In a series of X (Twitter) posts on Aug. 27, Clockwork founder Nick Garfield said he and the team will stop active development of the protocol and on Oct. 31 will turn off its nodes on devnet and mainnet.

Garfield cited “simple opportunity cost” as the reason for the team stepping back from Clockwork, admitting there were limited commercial benefits to continuing its development and the team had a growing interest in exploring other opportunities.

Clockwork is a protocol that allows users to schedule transactions on the Solana network and create smart contracts automated to run applications when triggered by an event.

Garfield said Clockwork’s code will remain open-source and freely available online and gave his “full endorsement to fork and ship” to anyone looking to continue work on the protocol.

According to Crunchbase data, Clockwork raised $4 million last August in a seed round co-led by venture firms Multicoin Capital and Asymmetric along with participation from Solana Ventures.

Asked by one X user whether the seed money would be returned to investors, Garfield responded it still has a meaningful portion of the funds but he will take time “before deciding one way or the other.”

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