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     <article>
       <h1>Winding Tree is Winding Down</h1>
       <h2>Letter from CEO Maksim Izmaylov</h2>
+      <p class="date">July 16, 2024</p>
+
+      <blockquote>
+        <h3>Preface</h3>
+        <p>Winding Tree was an attempt to establish a platform that would connect travel suppliers and sellers in a way that would not put Winding Tree into a monopolistic position if the experiment succeeded. The way to achieve this goal was to build open-source systems that could not be coopted by the incumbents.</p>
+        <p>The premise for creating such a platform is explained <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20221221161013/https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/travel-industrys-invisible-battle-maksim-izmaylov/">here</a>, and you could follow our progress on the <a href="https://blog.windingtree.com/">Winding Tree blog</a>.</p>
+        <p>The results of this experiment are a slew of other projects that follow in our footsteps, as well as the <a href="https://github.com/windingtree">open-source codebase</a> of our experimentations and working prototypes.</p>
+        <p>The project is now frozen, since we could not reach a product-market fit. Our hope is that others will succeed where we failed. The following text is an attempt to help them.</p>
+      </blockquote>
+
       <p>After years of dedicated effort, we've decided to close the Winding Tree project. This decision was primarily influenced by the crypto industry's unpreparedness and the need for more understanding and trust in blockchains within the travel sector.</p>
       <p>At the beginning of Winding Tree, there were two main problems: crypto wasn't ready, and the travel industry needed to understand and trust blockchains. We were hopeful about crypto, and our job was to educate people in travel. Crypto had evolved, but, unfortunately, orthogonally to our use case. At the same time, our attempts to educate travel executives weren't sufficient. A coordinated effort of travel companies is required for something like Winding Tree to thrive. Still, even in 2024, only a few people understand its proposition. We attacked the problem from different angles: B2B, B2C, <a href="https://github.com/windingtree/white-paper-v2/blob/main/build/paper.pdf">identity management</a>, etc. We worked unwaveringly towards the goals in the <a href="https://github.com/windingtree/white-paper/blob/main/white-paper.pdf">white paper</a>, but ultimately, we failed to find a product market fit. The founding team still firmly believes that our ideas hold true. What's not right is the timing.</p>
       <p>Professor <a href="https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0755-5223">Horst Treiblmaier</a> of <a href="https://www.modul.ac.at/">Modul University Vienna</a> is working on a paper in which he aims to analyze our project and why it didn't culminate in a complete overhaul of the travel industry, as we all hoped. While Professor Treiblmaier's probe is underway (it will take several months for him to publish his conclusions), we would like to recap what we learned working on Winding Tree and share it with whoever would be interested in listening.</p>