LBRY Inc., the company behind the open source decentralized platform, has admitted defeat in its legal battle with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The company now faces multimillion-dollar debts to the SEC, its legal team and a private debtor.

”LBRY Inc. must die, there is no way to escape this,” the company acknowledged in its last post.

LBRY gives up a long fight against the SEC

The company, which has been a prominent player in the cryptocurrency space, has been dealing with the SEC over its handling of the LBRY token. However, it has now dropped its appeal against the SEC's decision.

The company's assets, including Odysee, its flagship app, are bankrupt. All of LBRY's executives, employees and board members have resigned and the company has committed to doing what is necessary to satisfy outstanding legal requirements.

However, the future of the LBRY network remains uncertain. As the company post said: “Decentralization is not magic; It only works if enough people use it.”

Despite the company's closure, the LBRY network could survive if it continues to be widely used. But he could also die. The company's publication further questioned:

“Could LBRY continue to absorb all digital publications as we intended? Could this be the beginning of a descent into darkness? Who knows?."

Will there be life after death for LBRY?

Odysee, which serves more than 6 million people monthly, is still operating. CoinGecko rates the platform as the most popular Web 3.0 social networking site globally.

While Odysee's assets will almost certainly be taken over by someone interested in resuming its growth, it is unclear whether Odysee will continue to use the LBRY network in the future, switch to another crypto network, or transition to a traditional Web 2.0 platform. 15 most popular decentralized social networks in 2023, January-April 2023, where LBRY is not. Source: CoinGecko.

More than 1.7 million identities and 30 million pieces of content have been published on the LBRY blockchain. As long as the LBRY blockchain continues to be mined, these identities and records will continue to exist.

However, the content itself requires host nodes to function. If Odysee decides to stop using LBRY, content that is not actively published by others will no longer be available.

While the closure of LBRY Inc. is a significant setback for the company, the future of the LBRY network and Odysee remains in the hands of its users. As the company concluded,

“Ultimately, this will be decided by users, not us, and we encourage users to wait and see.”