The travel blockchain startup "Winding Tree" which launched in 2018 has announced it is shutting down, via a message on it's website from founder and CEO Maksim Izmaylov.
Max writes "After years of dedicated effort, we've decided to close the Winding Tree project. This decision was primarily influenced by the crypto industry's unpreparedness and the need for more understanding and trust in blockchains within the travel sector."
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Sad to see Winding Tree shutting down after many years.
Maksim's open letter and thoughts are posted on their homepage at windingtree.com.
I remember when Winding Tree announced their whitepaper in 2018 at the tail end of the ICO (Initial Coin Offering) craze. I posted some criticisms about the whitepaper, and Max and me had a few heated battles on Twitter about it (fun times!).
What I admire about Max is that he didn't run away with the millions of $ they made from the ICO. They spent a good few years building, educating, and trying to get their giant, disruptive idea to work. If anyone was going to pull this off, it would be Max.
As an observer, the failure in the project came from crypto not becoming widely adopted. There's lot's of reasons for this, and they result in a poor UX (as Max points out) for consumers. If consumers aren't using crypto, then there's little incentive for businesses to accept it.
I wish everyone from Winding Tree success in their future endeavours!
Sadly our experience was similar. As an early partner of Winding Tree we never found an effective way to marry their Open Source ideals with our need to protect some of our tech.
Walking around Silicon Valley pitching practical blockchain based travel solutions also was met with the same disinterest from the investment community, let along the travel community.
Back in 18/19 many governments had prepared banking legislation to permit widespread payments with crypto which sadly never came into existence. Again making prospective travel industry users fearful.
Blockchain and Crypto will come big time to travel. At some stage the volume of demand will reach a tipping point even for the conservative travel industry.
It will be interesting to see if the Winding Tree ideals will return at that point in time.
I remember those twitter bouts! Too bad. I never envied their challenge, the amount of education they had to do.
As a tourism student with a keen interest in technology and blockchain, discovering Winding Tree a few years ago was a pivotal moment for me. It made me realize there are people actively building in that space.
I even wrote my bachelor's thesis on the use of NFTs in the event and travel industries. I was fortunate to hear Max speak at a Web3 in Travel conference in Barcelona.
It's disappointing to see the project shutting down, but I'm confident they will return in some form.
Good luck in the future!
Hmmmm... lots to learn
So sad a news to hear about "winding Tree" After much dedication and investment of all kinds
But the integrity of the founder is most emulating
Wishing everyone at "winding Tree" a beautiful better n more accomplishing ending at their next endeavors