NFT Renting Platform Shuts Down, Citing 'Close to Zero Traction'

The founder of Rentable, the non-fungible token (NFT) protocol that lets users rent out their jpegs, announced today that the protocol will be shutting down after failing to find “product market fit.”

While withdrawals are still possible, rentals are now disabled, and users have until October 13 to finish withdrawals. After that date, the protocol will launch emergency withdrawals and send the tokens to their respective owners.

The project’s founder Emiliano Bonassi launched Rentable to target a different side of the NFT market, looking for people to rent out NFTs that would otherwise sit in wallets, collecting virtual dust. 

In June 2022, the protocol offered its services to Decentraland users, Meebits holders, and the Lobster DAO, letting “owners earn a yield w/o risk of liquidation,” according to Bonassi.

Bonassi said that “Rentable’s mission was to be agnostic, enabling rentals without being tied to a specific use-case. Rentable V2 enabled any dApp to offer rentals for their users without integrations (just WalletConnect), we removed any sort of barrier for platforms.”

However, Rentable could not secure funding and “got close to zero traction,” added the founder.

“We had the possibility to raise but we waited. We opted to check [product market fit] first since we had capital for building and auditing," Bonassi told Decrypt. "So, the main reason for closing is that after some pivots, we didn’t find a [product market fit].”

NFTs in this current market

Like the broader crypto market, NFTs have taken a hit since the industry’s heyday last November. 

In April, the floor price for a Bored Ape Yach Club (BAYC) NFT cost roughly 152 Ethereum. Just a few days later, that price had plummeted to 105 Ethereum. 

Data pulled from Crypto Slam now suggests that the floor price has fallen further to 76 Ethereum at press time. 

Market corrections have not affected interest, however. 

Tiffany & Co., for example, has partnered with CryptoPunks, releasing unique Punk pendants “exclusive to Punk holders” that came with an NFT of the necklace called NFTiffs. Just yesterday, Reddit founder Alex Ohanian’s investment firm 776 also announced that it had led a $54 million round in the popular NFT collection called Doodles. 

Following the news, sales volume for Doodles has surged by more than 700% over the past 24 hours.