Unfortunately, the only payout you will get from this situation is experience, you were sold vaporware, it might have been an interesting project for you, but for your cofounder his idea could fit into a shopify store.

> There is a bunch of new startups that has recently popped up, doing what we initially did with a caveat.

this is also a huge red flag, if there are many companies already investing in doing the same, why would they take your codebase? best case scenario would be to get a job on the same space now that you have: experience.