One of the most difficult decisions we’ve had to make at Gen3. After ~5 years of building on the XRPL (since before XLS-20), we sadly cannot justify to continue to pour time, money and energy into building retail-focused platforms.
We had the pleasure of pioneering a variety of different products within the XRP ecosystem, from one of the first gaming NFT collections (
@zerpmon), to the very-first autonomous agents that could use XRPL primitives (
@aigentdotrun), to XRP’s first prediction market (
@AxiomProtocol_), to building all of the core marketplace/DEX infrastructure for XRPL Sidechain; TRN alongside Futureverse (
@The_Tradeverse).
We experienced many ups and downs through these years, and witnessed the ecosystem go through many different changes and evolutions, but we are no longer able to see a future where we can sustainably run a retail-focused platform on the XRPL as a team of builders.
It really pains me to say this, as I’ve dedicated much of my life over the last 5 years to building on the XRPL, and have made many sacrifices in other parts of my life to fulfil this journey. Everyone at Gen3 put so much of their time, energy and commitment towards trying to build the platforms that will onboard the next generation of users to the XRPL, and I’m so proud of every single one of them, I could not have asked for a better or more talented team to work with over the last few years.
I’d also like to say thanks to everyone that supported us throughout this journey, XRPL Commons, RippleX, Tenity, DIFC, Futureverse, and Victus Global, just to name a few. And a massive thankyou to everyone who supported our platforms through using and sharing them, it meant the world to us and is primarily what kept us going for so long.
So where does this leave us? Gen3 will continue to be a part of the XRPL and support the evolution of the ledger but from a different angle. We will still operate and maintain our dUNL validator node, as well as reviewing/testing/discussing and voting on upcoming amendments. After building on the XRPL for so long, we have developed a deep technical understanding and appreciation for the technology and remain committed to supporting the technical growth of this ecosystem.
Personally, I will be taking a bit of a break from building and socials to “touch grass” and revive some of the parts of my life that have suffered from constant building day-in day-out for years. But, I’m sure eventually I’ll be back, there is something addictive about building around an asset like XRP…
It is such a shame that it has come to this, and the finger could be pointed in many different directions (including at ourselves), but I don't think that would do any good. I just hope that in the future those with the resources to support interesting and innovative builds on the XRPL actually put those resources into the ecosystem (something that feels like it has not been happening over the last couple years). There is a severe lack of funding opportunities for startups in the XRPL space that aren't already generating revenue from other chains or have strong relationships to those with the resources.
But, at the end of the day, no one owes anyone anything, and we're all just trying to follow what we think will improve the ecosystem and allow us to continue building on a daily basis. For us, we just don't believe that is through retail-focused platforms on the XRPL anymore. Personally, eyes are on the institutions.
Again, thanks to every single person that has supported us through this journey and that I've had the pleasure of meeting at some point, and can now call my friend. That is worth so much more than anything else we could have got out of this. 💜