According to a blog post by Recur, the platform will gradually lose its key features in the coming months. This includes the withdrawal of NFTs from Recur, cashing out stablecoin balances, and trading collectibles on Recur’s marketplaces.
In a tweet, the company acknowledged that this decision was not an easy one, attributing it to unforeseen challenges and changes in the business environment.
Recur’s announcement reflects the recent challenges faced by companies in the NFT space, as they navigate a decline in the popularity of digital collectibles. Despite embarking on a successful NFT collaboration with Hello Kitty and Friends last July, Recur’s ambitions have been curtailed just over a year later.
In that same July, Recur highlighted the “unprecedented demand” for its TV Packs, which contained profile-picture (PFP) NFTs of Nickelodeon characters like Tommy Pickles from “Rugrats.” However, Recur stated on Friday that pack openings will be disabled in November.
Recur, established in 2021, positioned itself as a provider of Web3 “building blocks” for businesses. Its platform enabled the creation of in-game assets, loyalty programs, and digital collectibles utilizing NFTs, as stated on its website.
Following suit, Nifty’s, a social network turned Web3 creators portal, recently announced its closure. Nifty’s had also partnered with prominent media titles like “The Matrix” and “Game of Thrones.”
With over 380,000 minted NFTs on Recur, the company has plans to ensure the preservation of various digital collectibles. Recur announced that metadata and media for its NFTs will be migrated to the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), a peer-to-peer file-sharing network developed by Protocol Labs. Additionally, other assets will be hosted on Filecoin’s network.
In December 2021, Recur offered a Recur Pass for sale during a limited 24-hour window. Priced at $300 as an NFT, the pass provided holders with early access to future NFT drops and other benefits, and could be resold. According to Recur, a Recur Pass was sold for $88,888 in February, but currently, the cheapest listed Recur Pass on OpenSea is priced at 0.001 ETH (approximately $1.69).
In late 2021, Recur’s valuation reached $333 million after announcing a $50 million Series A funding round. The round was led by Digital, an investment fund supported by the family office of Steve Cohen, the majority owner of the New York Mets and a billionaire hedge fund manager.
During an earlier $5 million seed funding round in the same year, notable names such as investor and NFT creator Gary Vaynerchuk, Gemini’s Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, and Ethereum co-founder and ConsenSys founder Joe Lubin participated. (Disclosure: ConsenSys funds an editorially-independent Decrypt.)