What’s Next for the Community?

• Rodeo platform announces plans to shut down its operations between Jan 27 and March 10, 2026.
• This Base and Ethereum-based platform has suffered from low mainstream adoption for a sustainable future.
• The work done by the Rodeo community will be stored through Arweave permanently.

Rodeo has announced its winding up of its operations. This Non-Fungible Token (NFT) social platform, which leverages Base and Ethereum (ETH) networks, informed its community to withdraw stored assets by March 10, 2026.

Rodeo NFT Platform Winds Up 

The Rodeo team announced it will begin winding down the platform after growth efforts failed. The shutdown process started on January 27 and will run through March 10.

According to Kayvon, co-founder of Rodeo, the platform did not grow to the set standards to meet its sustainable growth in the long term. As such, Kayvon stated that the path forward for Rodeo is not feasible despite its accrued global community.

The platform revealed that it did not achieve its core objective of catalyzing the mainstream adoption of NFTs in a social way. Moreover, Rodeo enabled sales and minting of NFTs at a low cost on a scalable chain. 

The economic model for Rodeo was to reward creativity, taste, and influencers, but failed to attract mainstream utility to catch the wave of institutional investors seeking to gain a Web3 exposure.

The winding down of Rodeo will be orderly for its community, which has grown significantly in recent years. According to Kayvon, the Rodeo community will continue to operate normally at the fundamental level, including posting and collecting of NFTs, until February 10, 2026.

After February 10, the Rodeo platform will transition into a read-only mode for both mobile and desktop users until March 10, when the last whistle will be heard. Meanwhile, Kayvon informed the community that all assets held on the platform will be available for transfer, including a seamless migration of the media and metadata to Arweave (AR).

“Rodeo the product won’t continue, but what was created on it will. That’s the power of building in web3. Work can outlive platforms. Culture can persist beyond products,” Kayvon stated.

What’s the Bigger Picture

The closure of Rodeo during the first quarter of 2026 follows a sustained bear market in the wider crypto industry. Earlier this week, popular analyst Benjamin Cowen predicted that most of the altcoins will experience a collapse in 2026 due to low retail and institutional adoption.

According to CoinGecko market data, total NFT trading volume has dropped from a peak of about $131.4 million in April 2022 to around $3.8 million at press time. Nonetheless, the top NFT projects – such as CryptoPunks, Bored Ape Yacht Club, and Pudgy Penguins – are well poised to survive and thrive through the ongoing crypto winter.

Related: NFT Market Cap Crashes 72% in 2025 as Traders Retreat