The Rally Sidechain is Dead

about 1 year ago

Hey Peeps!

Rally is no more.

Well the website still works at the moment, but the Rally sidechain is no longer supported and service should degrade over time, according to an email sent out to Rally users on January 31st.

One thing I found extremely odd and unprofessional was that Rally sent the email on the same day they would be ceasing support, essentially only giving their users less than 24 hours notice before the closure.

Rally was unable to recover from a difficult year, which saw Rally's governance token, RLY, peak at around $0.37 in February 2022, but is now trading at just $0.01.

Rally, a sidechain of Ethereum, described themselves as a place "for any streamer, artist, musician, gamer, celebrity, athlete, or content creator that wants to reward and engage with their followers, and for all the fans and communities of these creators".

This was accomplished with Creator Coins, which are social tokens that are a custom branded cryptocurrency that is unique to the individual creator and their communities. (Similar to DESO if you are familiar with that project)

Below is the official email sent out to Rally users announcing the shutdown:

We’re announcing, with regret, that the Rally sidechain will begin to sunset after today. This means that after today, the site will no longer be supported and you may experience a degradation in services or it may simply become inoperable. Additionally, since NFTs on the Rally sidechain are not transferable to mainnet, these will not be accessible once the site shuts down. As most of you are aware, 2022 was a challenging year not only for the platform, but also for the entire crypto industry. The team has worked relentlessly to try to find a path forward, however the challenges and macro headwinds are too overwhelming to overcome in the current environment. Although this is not the outcome we all hoped for and worked toward, we have not given up on our mission and belief in the future of empowering creators and communities with web3 experiences. Indeed, the Rally sidechain was the beginning of your web3 journey, not the destination. It is with this spirit that we are exploring whether we can build leaner web3 experiences and/or products on mainnet, however there are a number of factors that need to happen to make this a reality. We want to thank the Rally community for all of your support, patience, dedication, and belief in the Rally sidechain. --- To the future of Web3,The Rally Team

One key element of this news, is that users who had NFTs on the Rally sidechain are now left with no option as those NFTs are essentially trapped.

This is feels like insult to injury for many users who undoubtedly put a lot into the Rally ecosystem and now cannot even access the NFTs they own.

The last paragraph of the Rally email also alludes to a new product or service being created in the future, but this is odd as they are supposedly abandoning this project due to lack of support.

These types of comments or sentiments set off my alarm bells and make me suspicious.

Some on Twitter have already suggested what I am thinking, by calling the closure of Rally and all their services with less than 24 hours notice akin to a rug-pull.