Friendsie’s NFT Project In Hot Water After Possible Rug Pull Rumors
The creators of Friendsies, a collection of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), have come under fire after they announced a “pause” in the project’s operations and subsequently deleted their Twitter account.
Some have speculated that this action suggests the project could be a straw move, a form of cryptocurrency scam where the founders abruptly exit the market, leaving investors to hold worthless tokens.
Friendsie’s NFT Project: A Rug Pull?
The Friendsies team announced on February 21 that the “volatile nature” of the cryptocurrency market made it difficult to advance the project. So they have chosen to suspend the initiative until the market becomes more “stable and mature.”
Friends said:
“We had the best intentions to create a true digital companion for the future,” the company tweeted. “However, market volatility and difficulties have made it increasingly challenging to advance this project in a way that meets our standards.”
In line with Friendsies’ goal of creating 10,000 charming avatars, the project partnered with Christie’s in March 2022 to auction off nine early coin cards for the rarest Friendsies on OpenSea’s secondary marketplace.
However, after the announcement was made on Twitter, some users who questioned it were blocked, and Friendsies’ account was eventually taken down from the platform.
Where are the funds now?
In the hours after the Friendsies NFT project announced a “hiatus” and deleted all social media accounts, suspicions of a cover-up quickly circulated online.
ZachXBT, a pseudonymous on-chain scout, claims that the minting of 10,000 NFTs resulted in $5.3 million worth of ETH, despite the fact that the price of ETH gradually decreased during the minting process. It is unclear if and how the money was used.
With $5.3 million @friendsies_ai hard carpet earlier today it is still unclear how the funds could have been used.
There have been no announcements since September, no community tax and no P2E games.
The team blames “market volatility” as its reasoning. pic.twitter.com/FM8ytum4Ur
— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) 21 February 2023
In response to the tweet from @Zachxbt, @ArkhamInterl replied:
“Btw when these guys say “market volatility” they really mean “we held ETH down 70% and then sold the bottom” and linked the following transaction history:
According to ZachXBT, the developers claimed in their plan that “1.25% of all royalties (47 ETH) were intended to be returned to holders,” but this never happened and the roadmap was deleted from Discord to ensure there was no evidence for that.
NFT investor Tmagled claimed that a year after being targeted for speaking negatively about the venture, the tapering he warned against so vehemently finally happened.
LOL then a year later @farokh calling me a bad person for crapping on Friendsies for the upcoming quilt, I knew they would be… THEY RUGGED 😳😂
fake-rokh even called the friend founder one of his best friend(s) for a long time 😬😂
— tmagled 🐅🦍 (@tmagled) 21 February 2023
In the initial stages of the collection, Twitter users accused Farokh, the host of Rug Radio, and Jen Stark, a generative artist, of hyping the collection on social media.
Prominent NFT personalities, such as Farokh, were reportedly early proponents of the concept and reportedly made millions of dollars from initial sales.
To leave or not – that is the question
In response to the significant amount of backlash they received, the Friendsies team posted a tweet to reassure their backers that they had no plans to pull investors:
˙ᵕ˙ – Dear community,
It is clear that we have upset many of you with the nature of our announcement and perhaps we did not handle it in the best way. To be perfectly clear, we are not abandoning FRIENDS. Our only intention was to be transparent and communicate with
— FRIENDSiES (@fRiENDSiES_Ai) 21 February 2023
Since then, the project’s Twitter account has been restored, and the creators of the project have strongly denied that they are “abandoning” the initiative.
Legal action underway?
Meanwhile, former NFT product manager for Mastercard and current CEO of Web3 social app startup Joincircle, Satvik Sethi, said the project founders have been inactive on the Discord server following the “hiatus” announcement.
NFT holders are now considering potential next steps among themselves, such as ways to support community members or even potential legal action over unfulfilled obligations.
– Featured image from CryptoStars
