CNN abruptly closes Vault by CNN – the company’s exclusive NFT marketplace
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(Kitco News) – Multinational news broadcaster CNN has announced the abrupt shutdown of Vault by CNN, the company’s nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace that originally launched in June 2021.
Vault specialized in offering NFT versions of news organization reports on notable events such as space shuttle launches and presidential elections, and also sold art inspired by news events.
While the announcement caught many in the community off guard, a statement released by the company indicated that “Vault was originally launched as a 6-week experiment”, meaning it has survived well past its intended shelf life.
The initial support and engagement of the community allowed the project to extend beyond the original timeline, but the decline in interest and prices of NFTs in 2022 led the company to make the decision to close the platform.
“We learned a lot from our first foray into Web3, and we’re excited to carry Vault’s concepts around community storytelling into future projects,” CNN said in a statement posted on Twitter. “While we will no longer develop or maintain this community, the Vault NFT Collection will live on.”
The response from the community has been similar to what is seen when any crypto project folds, with people accusing CNN of essentially pulling the rug and running away with the funds raised.
“There goes my CNN Vault investment, never would have guessed CNN as a company pulling a rug,” said user MM81 in the Vault by CNN Discord server.
While CNN has not fully repaid the community and remains in communication with NFT holders, the fact that the project’s roadmap includes new features until the end of Q4 2022 makes this look like it was a hasty decision made with little thought society.
It has been estimated by CNN that Vault had made $324,000 from the 28 highest-priced NFT runs on the market before fees, but these figures have not been confirmed by the company.
Discussions of the community discord indicate that collectors will be able to retrieve some of the original contributions.
“We are currently working on the details, but expect the distribution amount to be approximately 20% of the original coin price for each Vault NFT owned,” Discord moderator and Vault by CNN core team member Jason said in a thread. The partial refund will reportedly be paid in FLOW tokens or Stablecoins.
The moderator also indicated that the collection would “live on” when asked if the images and video in the NFTs stored on the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) protocol would remain. CNN plans to continue operating the Vault Marketplace and the Discord server will remain open until the deployments are processed.
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