Social Token Platform Rally Shutting Down

Rally, a social token platform on the Ethereum network, announced that it was calling it quits on Tuesday. The news came via an email to the Rally community saying that the Rally sidechain would begin sunsetting on January 31—the same day the email was sent.

“As most of you are aware, 2022 was a challenging year not only for the platform, but also for the entire crypto industry,” Rally explained in the announcement. “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.”

"We will begin to sunset the platform as of today’s date due to lack of ongoing support," Rally CEO Rob Collier told Decrypt, noting that funding was the key challenge. "The Rally sidechain, built in 2018, was very expensive to maintain compared to all of the new layer-1 tech stacks that have launched recently."

Rally.io is an Ethereum-based platform for creators to launch social tokens, which lets social media personalities, bands, and esports teams engage with and monetize their communities. Notable creators on Rally include actor and creator Felicia Day, musician BT, and LA Rams wide receiver Brandon Powell.

Creators were encouraged to enlist their fans and followers to support them by purchasing their Rally tokens, rewarding holders with various perks. But when the ability to withdraw them was interrupted last fall, users began to rail against the program on Twitter.

"We experienced a disruption to withdrawal services in August due to a lack of third-party support," Collier said. "However, from November 1 until January 24, users have been able to withdraw all of their assets. We gave various notices to support Rally users in this regard."

The underlying RLY token value peaked at $1.38 in April 2021 but declined since. RLY has been trading at around $0.01 since October 2022.

Rally says that the decision to shut down the sidechain means that the NFTs hosted there will no longer be supported, warning collectors that they may experience “a degradation in services” and that NFTs may not work.

In January 2022, SuperLayer, the venture studio from the co-founders of Rally, announced plans to move to the rival Solana blockchain. The announcement came after the RLY Network Association launched a RLY token on Solana.

Collectors looking to transfer their assets off the Rally sidechain may be out of luck. Rally said in its email the NFTs on the Rally sidechain are not transferable to the Ethereum mainnet.

Despite this turn of events, Rally says that it has not given up on its mission of empowering creators and communities with web3 experiences.

“Indeed, the Rally sidechain was the beginning of your web3 journey, not the destination,” they said. “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.”

Editor's note: this article has been updated to include comments from Rally CEO Rob Collier.