This appears to be a trend that will continue in 2022. After promising backers a Minecraft PvP game with play-to-earn elements, another huge NFT project has gone dark and taken off with the money.
Blockverse sold out in eight minutes, raising $1.2 million, according to reports. But, just a day later, there’s been no movement on social media, the website link is defunct, and the Discord server has shut down. Its NFTs are still for sale on auction site OpenSea, but no word on the promised game.
Web3, an initiative committed to putting a light on the industry’s more nefarious side, has identified the newest NFT dispute, and it’s going fantastic (which just happens to be a whole lot of it).
The project’s Twitter account is still up as of this writing, although there hasn’t been any activity since January 24. The last two postings introduce the Discord server (which now looks to be closed, as it is no longer possible to join) and celebrate the project’s great success in just a few minutes. Despite this, Blockverse continues to sell Minecraft NFTs on OpenSea, and it’s unclear whether the site is aware of the developers’ silence.
This development has angered even the pro-NFT mob. NFT Ethics, a Twitter account, remarked on the situation, saying, “Yesterday, the project sold out in under 8 minutes (500 ETH) and had 792 ETH in secondary sales. The Discord server and website have been shut down, and the anonymous developers have left. Is a federated organization required to approve all NFT initiatives and their doxxed founders?”
When members of the NFT community clamor for a centralized organization to approve purchases, it shows how widespread these seeming rug-pulling scams have become. This goes against the fundamental concept of cryptocurrency, but I suppose losing a large sum of money to a rando online will do that.