The Solana-based ridesharing app, Teleport, has officially shut down. This decision comes just eight months after its public launch. The reason? A lack of market readiness for decentralized ridesharing.
Teleport aimed to compete with giants like Uber and Lyft. However, they found the market conditions weren't right for their business model. In a statement on their website and a post on X from January 30, they expressed their disappointment, saying, “This is not the outcome we had hoped for. We’re sorry we didn’t find a way to make this business work!”
An engineer at Teleport, known as “Chase,” shared on X that “the rideshare market isn’t ready for a decentralized protocol just yet.” He described the decision to close the app as “difficult but necessary.”
Founder Paul Bohm mentioned that starting this company was “the hardest thing I’ve ever tried doing.” Teleport raised $9 million in funding back in October 2022 and launched publicly in June. They plan to provide a more detailed analysis of their closure in the future. For now, they are focused on winding down operations and assisting users in off-ramping their USD Coin balances and private keys until February 28.
Teleport tried to set itself apart from Uber by taking a 15% cut from each ride, compared to Uber’s 25% to 30%. Drivers could choose to get paid in either USDC or fiat through Apple Pay. They claimed their rides were consistently cheaper than Uber’s. Between their launch on June 1 and November 24, Teleport completed 1,321 rides and had 13,834 users sign up.
During the week of November 11 to 17, they reported 178 drivers were active, which was more than three times the number from the previous week. The most popular cities for Teleport’s services were New York City and Austin, Texas, right before they closed.
However, some users left low ratings on the Apple App Store, complaining that drivers were often unavailable. Teleport served as the mobile client for the TRIP Rideshare Protocol, which is owned by the Decentralized Engineering Corporation.
Decentralized ridesharing apps have been trying to challenge Uber since at least September 2016. That’s when Arcade City launched but failed to get a single ride in its first two weeks.