NFT Rental Platform Shuts Down, Citing ‘Near Zero Traction’

by James · September 14, 2022

The founder of Profitable, the non-fungible token (NFT) protocol that allows users to rent out jpeg files, announced today that the protocol will be shut down after it has not found “product market fit.”

Although withdrawals are still possible, rentals are now disabled and users have until October 13 to complete withdrawals. After that date, the protocol will start emergency withdrawals and send 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 their wallets, collection virtual dust.

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Metaverses and blockchain-based games often require new users to own highly valued NFTs 💵

It limits the audience to these platforms since the high entry price 🚧

NFTs usually remain inactive in the owner wallet and are therefore underutilized on the platform 📉

— emiliano.eth (@emilianobonassi) 24 October 2021

In June 2022, the protocol offered its services to Decentralized country users, Meebits holders and Lobster DAO, which allows “owners earn a return without the risk of liquidation. according to Bonassi.

Bonassi said that “Profitable’s mission was to be agnostic, enabling rentals without being tied to a specific use case. Profitable V2 made it possible for any dApp to offer rentals to its users without integrations (only WalletConnect), we removed any kind of platform barrier.”

However, Profitable couldn’t secure funding and “got close to zero traction,” the founder added.

Decrypt contacted Bonassi for further comment but did not hear back by press time.

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 Boring Monkey Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT cost about 152 Ethereum. Just a few days later, the price had fallen to 105 Ethereum.

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

However, market corrections have not affected interest.

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

Following the news, sales volume for Doodles has increased by more than 700% last 24 hours.