Nocturne a privacy protocol developer supported by Vitalik Buterin closes its doors
The developers of the privacy-centric protocol Nocturne have announced the company’s closure, just four months after discontinuing the protocol itself.
Nocturne, the creators of a privacy-focused protocol for Ethereum, is ceasing operations less than a year after receiving $6 million in funding from Bain Capital Crypto, Polychain Capital, and Vitalik Buterin.
In an announcement on Jun. 5, the Nocturne team revealed that the website will remain open for withdrawals until the end of June. Following this deadline, the withdrawal process will transition to a self-serve format through a GitHub repository. No explanation was provided for the shutdown.
This decision comes after Nocturne’s move in February to shut down the v1 version of the protocol and shift focus to a new product in the application space. The team mentioned the early stage of the layer-2 ecosystem as a factor in the protocol’s closure, stressing that the shift to public layer-2 networks must come before privacy.
Nocturne’s goal was to enable private accounts on the Ethereum network, allowing users to send and receive cryptocurrency confidentially.
In October 2023, Nocturne secured $6 million in a seed round led by Bain Capital Crypto and Polychain Capital, with support from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and other members of the Ethereum community. The funds were intended for deploying and advancing private accounts on Ethereum.
For more information, Edward Snowden has urged privacy updates in Bitcoin following the closure of Coinjoin.
