Audit log

Every state-changing event for Clockwork: moderation decisions on community submissions, plus corrections and updates from the news pipeline. URL-based decisions carry three independent witnesses — the original source, an Internet Archive snapshot taken at submission time, and a Solana memo signed by our publicly-disclosed publisher key.

1. #1publishby system:backfill

   2026-05-31 21:15:17Z
   Score: ? → ? (no score change)
   anchoranchored

   chain

   ●mainnet-betaslot 423,453,979

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   2vvTE2XZZJwo…oRES1wtrcopyexplorer ↗

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   284FW79hZ2kX…8bjbtGZXcopysha256 → base58

   verifying row…full verify ↗

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   {"actor":"system:backfill","investigation_id":"688a8c90-57d9-408f-82ea-822fbbe378bc","kind":"publish","page_slug":"clockwork","published_at":"2026-05-31T21:15:17.167Z","sequence_num":1,"snapshot":{"content_type":"investigation","entity_name":"Clockwork","sections":[{"content":"Clockwork was an open-source automation engine built on the Solana blockchain. Its core function was to enable developers to schedule recurring transactions and build event-driven smart contracts that could execute autonomously without depending on off-chain cron jobs or centralized cloud providers such as AWS or Google Cloud. The protocol operated by incentivizing Solana validator nodes (referred to as worker nodes) to monitor trigger conditions and submit transactions on behalf of programs. Key use cases included DAO tooling, payroll automation, recurring payment streams, and on-chain liquidation bots. The project was listed on the official Solana ecosystem page and integrated by third-party developer tooling providers including QuickNode. The codebase was written primarily in Rust (97%) and licensed under AGPL-3.0, and it was hosted publicly at github.com/clockwork-xyz/clockwork. The protocol was formerly known as Cronos and won the Grand Champion prize ($65,000 in USDC) at the Solana Riptide global hackathon in early 2022 before rebranding and raising its seed round later that year.","heading":"Project Overview and Technical Purpose","severity":"low","sources":[{"credibility":1,"name":"Solana-Based Automation Network Clockwork Raises $4M in Seed Funding — CoinDesk","type":"news_article","url":"https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/08/30/solana-based-automation-network-clockwork-raises-4m-in-seed-funding"},{"credibility":2,"name":"How to Use Clockwork to Automate Solana Programs — QuickNode Guides","type":"other","url":"https://www.quicknode.com/guides/solana-development/3rd-party-integrations/automation-with-clockwork"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Meet the winners of the Riptide hackathon — Solana Media","type":"official","url":"https://solana.com/news/riptide-hackathon-winners-solana"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Clockwork on Solana Ecosystem Page","type":"official","url":"https://solana.com/ecosystem/clockwork"},{"credibility":2,"name":"GitHub — clockwork-xyz/clockwork","type":"official","url":"https://github.com/clockwork-xyz/clockwork"}]},{"content":"Clockwork was founded by Nick Garfield in September 2021, initially under the name Cronos, with a stated mission to build decentralized automation tooling on Solana for payments and smart-contract scheduling. The project underwent a rebranding to Clockwork and relocated its web presence to clockwork.xyz. In August 2022 Clockwork closed a $4 million seed round co-led by Multicoin Capital and Asymmetric, with additional participation from Solana Ventures. The funding was disclosed publicly and covered by both CoinDesk and The Block. Garfield noted at the time that the objective was to 'rewrite a lot of automation tooling that exists on the cloud service providers and make it work for decentralized internet.' The quality and identity of the investor syndicate — Multicoin Capital, Asymmetric, and Solana Ventures are all recognized institutional crypto funds — constitutes a positive signal regarding the project's early credibility. No additional funding rounds or token sales have been identified in available public records; Clockwork did not issue a publicly traded native token.","heading":"Founding, Funding, and Investor Backers","severity":"low","sources":[{"credibility":1,"name":"Solana-Based Automation Network Clockwork Raises $4M in Seed Funding — CoinDesk","type":"news_article","url":"https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/08/30/solana-based-automation-network-clockwork-raises-4m-in-seed-funding"},{"credibility":1,"name":"Solana automation network Clockwork raises $4 million — The Block","type":"news_article","url":"https://www.theblock.co/post/165953/solana-automation-network-clockwork-raises-4-million"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Solana-Based Automation Network Clockwork Raises $4M — Yahoo Finance / CoinDesk","type":"news_article","url":"https://finance.yahoo.com/news/solana-based-automation-network-clockwork-143935541.html"}]},{"content":"On August 28, 2023, founder Nick Garfield announced via a post on X (formerly Twitter) that he and the team would stop active development of the Clockwork protocol and turn off all infrastructure nodes on both devnet and mainnet on October 31, 2023. Garfield described the primary reason as 'simple opportunity cost,' stating the team saw 'limited commercial upside in continuing to develop the protocol' and had a 'growing personal interest to explore new opportunities.' The shutdown was orderly and publicly communicated with advance notice. Garfield disclosed that a 'meaningful portion' of the $4 million seed funding remained unspent at the time of the announcement, and he stated that fully shutting down and returning those funds to investors was under active consideration, though a final decision had not yet been made publicly. Garfield additionally encouraged the developer community to fork the open-source codebase and suggested alternatives including Switchboard, Helius Labs, and Triggr for teams that had been relying on Clockwork. The protocol's on-chain programs were frozen, but the code repository remained accessible on GitHub. The community-oriented GitHub organization open-clockwork was identified as a potential continuation point for community-maintained development. The shutdown is not associated with any fraud, rug pull, security exploit, investor dispute, or regulatory action. It is assessed as a voluntary commercial wind-down.","heading":"Shutdown Announcement and Wind-Down Process","severity":"medium","sources":[{"credibility":1,"name":"Solana-Based Automation Startup Clockwork to Shut Down — CoinDesk","type":"news_article","url":"https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/08/28/solana-based-automation-startup-clockwork-to-shut-down"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Founder, Team Members of Solana-Based Clockwork to Step Away From Protocol — CryptoPotato","type":"news_article","url":"https://cryptopotato.com/founder-team-members-of-solana-based-clockwork-to-step-away-from-protocol/"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Solana-based Clockwork to shutter, citing 'limited commercial upside' — CoinTelegraph","type":"news_article","url":"https://cointelegraph.com/news/solana-based-automation-protocol-clockwork-to-shutter"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Solana-Based Project Clockwork to Shut Down — Unchained","type":"news_article","url":"https://unchainedcrypto.com/solana-based-project-clockwork-to-shut-down/"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Solana-based Protocol Clockwork To Shut Down Despite $4 Million Seed Funding — CryptoNews","type":"news_article","url":"https://cryptonews.com/news/solana-based-protocol-clockwork-to-shut-down-despite-4-million-seed-funding/"}]},{"content":"Nick Garfield, the founder and CEO, operated under his real name and was publicly identified in all fundraising and shutdown communications. His LinkedIn profile (linkedin.com/in/nick-garfield-6520aa117) is publicly accessible, and he appeared on at least one public podcast (Logan Jastremski Podcast, episode 35) discussing Clockwork's technology. His academic background traces to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He used the X handle @time_composer. The broader team was not individually named in available public reporting, but the entity presented itself as a small startup, not an anonymously-operated project. The absence of anonymous or pseudonymous leadership is a positive indicator under standard trust-assessment criteria. No known prior controversies, regulatory history, or adverse associations have been identified for Garfield or the named team.","heading":"Team Transparency and Founder Identity","severity":"low","sources":[{"credibility":2,"name":"Nick Garfield | Founder of Clockwork | Podcast #35 — YouTube","type":"other","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvVQCsvD9JI"},{"credibility":1,"name":"Solana-Based Automation Startup Clockwork to Shut Down — CoinDesk","type":"news_article","url":"https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/08/28/solana-based-automation-startup-clockwork-to-shut-down"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Nick Garfield — LinkedIn","type":"other","url":"https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-garfield-6520aa117/"}]},{"content":"No security exploits, hacks, or on-chain fund losses involving the Clockwork protocol have been identified in available public records. Clockwork did not issue a native publicly-traded token, which substantially reduces the surface area for common crypto fraud vectors (pump-and-dump, rug pull, token drain). No regulatory filings, enforcement actions, or investigations by the SEC, CFTC, DOJ, or other authorities relating to Clockwork or Nick Garfield have been identified. The protocol's shutdown did not trigger any legal or investor disputes in documented public sources. The unspent seed capital situation — where Garfield disclosed remaining funds were present and a decision on return was pending — could theoretically be a point of investor concern, though no public complaint from Multicoin Capital, Asymmetric, or Solana Ventures has been identified. Overall, the regulatory and security risk profile for Clockwork is assessed as low.","heading":"Security, Fraud, and Regulatory Record","severity":"low","sources":[{"credibility":1,"name":"Solana-Based Automation Startup Clockwork to Shut Down — CoinDesk","type":"news_article","url":"https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/08/28/solana-based-automation-startup-clockwork-to-shut-down"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Clockwork on Solana Ends Development Despite $4M Seed Funding — Blockchain.news","type":"news_article","url":"https://blockchain.news/news/clockwork-on-solana-ends-development-despite-4m-seed-funding-last-year"}]},{"content":"The Clockwork codebase was released under the AGPL-3.0 open-source license and remained accessible on GitHub under the clockwork-xyz organization following the official infrastructure shutdown on October 31, 2023. The primary repository (clockwork-xyz/clockwork) had accumulated 311 stars and 88 forks at the time of assessment, with 69 total releases and the last tagged release being v2.0.19 (February 7, 2024), suggesting post-shutdown maintenance activity. A separate GitHub organization, open-clockwork, exists as a community-maintained continuation point for the protocol. Garfield explicitly encouraged forking in his shutdown announcement, and the documentation site docs.clockwork.xyz was preserved for developer reference. These factors are consistent with a responsible open-source wind-down rather than an abandonment.","heading":"Open-Source Status and Post-Shutdown Continuity","severity":"low","sources":[{"credibility":2,"name":"GitHub — clockwork-xyz/clockwork","type":"official","url":"https://github.com/clockwork-xyz/clockwork"},{"credibility":2,"name":"GitHub — open-clockwork/clockwork","type":"other","url":"https://github.com/open-clockwork/clockwork"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Founder, Team Members of Solana-Based Clockwork to Step Away From Protocol — CryptoPotato","type":"news_article","url":"https://cryptopotato.com/founder-team-members-of-solana-based-clockwork-to-step-away-from-protocol/"}]},{"content":"The primary risk signal for Clockwork is project discontinuation: the infrastructure shut down on October 31, 2023, meaning any application that was relying on Clockwork's worker network became non-functional as of that date without migrating to an alternative. Developers who had integrated Clockwork automation into their protocols faced migration costs and potential operational gaps. The disposition of remaining seed funding was not resolved publicly, though no investor complaint has surfaced. The project carried no publicly-traded token, did not raise money from retail participants, and left all code open-source — factors that collectively reduce the harm footprint of the shutdown. No indicators of deliberate deception, misrepresentation, or misappropriation of funds have been identified. The trust score reflects the project's legitimate origin, transparent team, credible institutional backers, and responsible sunset process, offset by the project's discontinued status and the unresolved question of remaining capital disposition.","heading":"Risk Signals and Trust Assessment","severity":"medium","sources":[{"credibility":1,"name":"Solana-Based Automation Startup Clockwork to Shut Down — CoinDesk","type":"news_article","url":"https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/08/28/solana-based-automation-startup-clockwork-to-shut-down"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Solana-based Clockwork to shutter, citing 'limited commercial upside' — CoinTelegraph","type":"news_article","url":"https://cointelegraph.com/news/solana-based-automation-protocol-clockwork-to-shutter"}]}],"sources_used":[{"credibility":1,"name":"Solana-Based Automation Startup Clockwork to Shut Down — CoinDesk","type":"news_article","url":"https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/08/28/solana-based-automation-startup-clockwork-to-shut-down"},{"credibility":1,"name":"Solana-Based Automation Network Clockwork Raises $4M in Seed Funding — CoinDesk","type":"news_article","url":"https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/08/30/solana-based-automation-network-clockwork-raises-4m-in-seed-funding"},{"credibility":1,"name":"Solana automation network Clockwork raises $4 million — The Block","type":"news_article","url":"https://www.theblock.co/post/165953/solana-automation-network-clockwork-raises-4-million"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Solana-based Clockwork to shutter, citing 'limited commercial upside' — CoinTelegraph","type":"news_article","url":"https://cointelegraph.com/news/solana-based-automation-protocol-clockwork-to-shutter"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Solana-Based Project Clockwork to Shut Down — Unchained","type":"news_article","url":"https://unchainedcrypto.com/solana-based-project-clockwork-to-shut-down/"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Founder, Team Members of Solana-Based Clockwork to Step Away From Protocol — CryptoPotato","type":"news_article","url":"https://cryptopotato.com/founder-team-members-of-solana-based-clockwork-to-step-away-from-protocol/"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Solana-based Protocol Clockwork To Shut Down Despite $4 Million Seed Funding — CryptoNews","type":"news_article","url":"https://cryptonews.com/news/solana-based-protocol-clockwork-to-shut-down-despite-4-million-seed-funding/"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Clockwork on Solana Ends Development Despite $4M Seed Funding — Blockchain.news","type":"news_article","url":"https://blockchain.news/news/clockwork-on-solana-ends-development-despite-4m-seed-funding-last-year"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Meet the winners of the Riptide hackathon — Solana Media","type":"official","url":"https://solana.com/news/riptide-hackathon-winners-solana"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Clockwork on Solana Ecosystem Page","type":"official","url":"https://solana.com/ecosystem/clockwork"},{"credibility":2,"name":"GitHub — clockwork-xyz/clockwork","type":"official","url":"https://github.com/clockwork-xyz/clockwork"},{"credibility":2,"name":"GitHub — open-clockwork/clockwork","type":"other","url":"https://github.com/open-clockwork/clockwork"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Nick Garfield | Founder of Clockwork | Podcast #35 — YouTube","type":"other","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvVQCsvD9JI"},{"credibility":2,"name":"How to Use Clockwork to Automate Solana Programs — QuickNode Guides","type":"other","url":"https://www.quicknode.com/guides/solana-development/3rd-party-integrations/automation-with-clockwork"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Nick Garfield — LinkedIn","type":"other","url":"https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-garfield-6520aa117/"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Solana-Based Automation Network Clockwork Raises $4M — Yahoo Finance","type":"news_article","url":"https://finance.yahoo.com/news/solana-based-automation-network-clockwork-143935541.html"}],"summary":"Clockwork was a Solana-based smart-contract automation protocol that allowed developers to schedule transactions and build event-driven on-chain programs without relying on centralized cloud infrastructure. Founded in 2021 as Cronos and rebranded in 2022, the project raised $4 million in seed funding from Multicoin Capital, Asymmetric, and Solana Ventures before its founder announced an orderly shutdown effective October 31, 2023, citing limited commercial upside. No fraud, security exploits, or regulatory actions have been identified; the shutdown is assessed as a voluntary wind-down of a legitimate infrastructure project.","timeline":[{"date":"2021-09","event":"Nick Garfield founds the project, initially under the name Cronos, with a focus on payment automation programs on Solana.","source":"CoinDesk / The Block funding coverage","source_url":"https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/08/30/solana-based-automation-network-clockwork-raises-4m-in-seed-funding"},{"date":"2022-03","event":"Cronos wins the Grand Champion prize ($65,000 USDC) at the Solana Riptide global hackathon, gaining ecosystem recognition.","source":"Solana Media — Riptide Hackathon Winners","source_url":"https://solana.com/news/riptide-hackathon-winners-solana"},{"date":"2022-08-30","event":"Clockwork (formerly Cronos) closes a $4 million seed round co-led by Multicoin Capital and Asymmetric, with Solana Ventures participating.","source":"CoinDesk","source_url":"https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/08/30/solana-based-automation-network-clockwork-raises-4m-in-seed-funding"},{"date":"2023-08-28","event":"Founder Nick Garfield publicly announces the team is stepping away from active development and will shut off all nodes on October 31, 2023, citing 'limited commercial upside.'","source":"CoinDesk","source_url":"https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/08/28/solana-based-automation-startup-clockwork-to-shut-down"},{"date":"2023-10-31","event":"Clockwork shuts down all devnet and mainnet worker nodes as announced. The codebase remains open-source on GitHub.","source":"CoinTelegraph / CryptoPotato","source_url":"https://cointelegraph.com/news/solana-based-automation-protocol-clockwork-to-shutter"},{"date":"2024-02-07","event":"GitHub shows release v2.0.19 tagged, indicating post-shutdown community maintenance activity on the open-source repository.","source":"GitHub — clockwork-xyz/clockwork releases","source_url":"https://github.com/clockwork-xyz/clockwork/releases"}]},"v":1}

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