NeoNexus founder pulls the plug on popular metaverse NFT project
The founding father of NeoNexus, a Solana-based NFT challenge, has acknowledged the crew is not growing the challenge, blaming the drop in Solana (SOL) costs for the choice.
The challenge‘s founder, Jack Shi, took to the official Twitter account for NeoNexus, tweeting at 2:00 pm UTC on Monday that it was not persevering with the “wholesome improvement” of the challenge, including they wish to hand it over for the group to develop.
It’s with a heavy coronary heart that we should inform you that we are able to not proceed wholesome improvement of the NEONEXUS challenge. We wish to hand over the challenge to our group, or a community-selected celebration for takeover if that is possible / potential.
I am deeply sorry,
Jack— neonexus_world (@neonexus_world) March 21, 2022
Estimates suggest that the challenge raised round 25,000 SOL for its NFT mints which might be price $2.2 million on the time of writing. With SOL costs climbing to over $150 across the time of the token mints, the challenge might have made an estimated $3.5 to $4.5 million.
NeoNexus is a metaverse challenge that options each a deliberate utility and a governance coin. It had sold over 4,000 “property NFTs,” with the challenge planning to supply an additional 6,000 property NFTs and character, automobile and accent tokens deliberate for the long run. The challenge at present has over 13,000 members in its Discord channel.
In a put up on the challenge‘s Discord, Shi wrote that the market situations have been to blame for the crew halting improvement, with the challenge‘s funds used to pay wages, tech infrastructure, enterprise charges and taxes.
“It has been extremely troublesome attempting to develop and proceed our challenge on this ecosystem and market situations the place the value of SOL has dropped a lot and the exercise, quantity, and curiosity within the entirety of the Solana NFT house has decreased.”
Market situations over the previous few months have been uneven, with the value of SOL falling over 50% in three months, according to knowledge from CoinGecko. It hit a 90 day excessive of simply over $200 in late December and since has steadily fallen to commerce across the $80 mark.
Shi added that over 20 employees members of the dad or mum firm, Unlock Defi, had been laid off as of the top of March, and requested if a group takeover was potential.
Many commenters have accused the challenge of committing a slow-rug, increase the challenge solely to exit and take the funds months later.
Rattling that’s an enormous gradual rug
— Keizer166 (@KeizerNFT) March 21, 2022
Associated: DeFi ‘Godfather’ Cronje quits as TVL and tokens tank for associated tasks
Pseudonymous crypto rip-off researcher and author, “zachxbt,” shared screenshots of tweets Shi made in November, displaying the founder sitting in a supercar and boasting of using in a Lamborghini. Zachxbt used these pictures to query how the challenge may elevate thousands and thousands solely to expire of funds in a couple of months.
So this challenge raised $4m from a number of NFT drops and in some way runs out of the funds after just some months?
Right here’s the founder flexing again in November. https://t.co/NzTyumRyuN pic.twitter.com/i7Y45VSAKD
— zachxbt (@zachxbt) March 21, 2022
Numerous NFT tasks marketed their very own choices when responding to the NeoNexus tweet in an try to alleviate the losses some traders might have shouldered as a result of announcement. Many supplied whitelists for upcoming mints to those that responded with “NEONEXUS” on their respective Discord channels.
On the time of writing, the web sites for each the NeoNexus challenge and Unlock Defi have been offline. Cointelegraph reached out to Shi and former workers for remark however they didn’t instantly reply.
