According to recent reports, Sponsy, a blockchain-based platform that was under-development to help sponsors engage with their clients in a decentralized manner, has ended up on eBay, a leading e-commerce and online auctions site. The developers are now making efforts to sell their failed blockchain project and idea on eBay – with bids starting at $60,000.
As was reported by ZeroHedge, it seems that the project’s leaders have “called it quits” and also listed their company on the e-commerce website for what now looks like a paltry sum of $60,000 as opposed to the millions they has intentions of raising through an initial coin offering (ICO) in late 2017.
Ivan Komar, a member of Sponsy’s founding team, said to Financial Times that it was normal for blockchain projects without working products to acquire millions in funding due to the “crypto mania” – which saw digital asset prices reach all-time highs towards the end of 2017.
However, Komar’s lawyer reportedly suggested at the time he shouldn’t seek funding for Sponsy via an ICO until the company had either developed the product itself or at least created a compelling proof-of-concept.
In a transcript presented to the news outlet, Komar elaborated on what he believes went wrong with the Sponsy project, which was conceived during the epic crypto market bull run. Komar said,
We hired a lawyer and that was a big mistake for us. Because our lawyer basically told us that we should not launch any ICO before we built a real product that might have some users. And I asked him why, because I saw so many ICOs out there who did not have any idea for any product, yet they managed to raise tens of millions of dollars.
Instead of capitalizing on the potential investment opportunities presented during the bull market, Komar says he now regrets having waited until mid-2018 to raise funds. In the way of explanation, he said,
The core business model would run just as well in the centralized world without any tokens or crypto or blockchain. They can easily eliminate the crypto functionality out of this. The core component is a platform. It doesn’t require any crypto or blockchain component to work. Just a typical, centralized server.
To him, $60,000 is quite a reasonable demand for his project and that it’s worth at least $200,000 – if not more. Currently, there are no bids that have been placed on the project, and it also does not have any watchers.
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