XRPL Labs’ Wietse Wind announces shutting down of XRPText
XRP community homes several developers working on new products and developing use cases for the digital asset. Wietse Wind, the lead developer of XRPL Labs has been an active contributor whose personal project includes XRPTipBot, XRParrot, and XRPText, among many. Irrespective of its use case, XRParrot recently shut down due to regulatory restrictions and on 30 January, Wietse Wind announced shutting another project, XRPText.
XRPText, launched in 2018, was based on proof-of-concept and used text messages to initiate token transfers. However, according to the XRPL developer, the project did not register enough use to get it licensed.
He added:
“Hey #XRPCommunity, please withdraw your funds from sms.xrptext.com before Feb. 28th 2020, as I am shutting this project down. It was fun, it (still is) was a nice proof of concept, but it is simply not being used enough to get it licensed (implement KYC, AML, etc.)”
The project has been shut down, according to the notice on the website, and has urged the users to withdraw their XRPs.
Wind noted that the user balances above 20 XRP after the withdrawal deadline will be sent to a charity in the Netherlands. He concluded:
“Last but not least: ?thank you for testing, trying and using the project. It was fun! But as I’m now trying to start a licensed / registered business, I don’t want to risk a small project like XRPText to possibly bite me in the ass.”
The regulations coming into place in the Netherlands have made the overall costs for licensing and registration expensive, and as the XRPText project did not take off as expected, there was no reason for Wind to license the project. XRPParrot also faced this dilemma and decided to shut down on 16 January 2020.