The creators of Friendsies, a collection of non-fungible tokens (NFT), have come under fire after announcing a “pause” in the project’s operations and subsequently deleting their Twitter account.
Some have speculated that this action has caused the project to become a carpet drag, a form of cryptocurrency fraud where the founders suddenly leave the market and leave investors holding worthless tokens.
NFT Friendsies Project: Pull the Carpet?
The Friendsies team announced on February 21 that the “volatile nature” of the cryptocurrency market made it difficult to move the project forward. As such, he chose to delay the initiative until the market became more “stable and mature.”
Friends said:
“We have the best intentions to create a genuine digital companion for the future,” the company tweeted. “However, market volatility and difficulties have made it challenging to move this project forward in a manner that meets our standards.”
In line with Friendsies’ goal of creating 10,000 fantastic avatars, the project is partnering with Christie’s in March 2022 to auction nine early access passes for the rarest Friendsies on the OpenSea secondary market.
However, after the announcement was made on Twitter, some users who questioned it were blocked, and the Friendsies account was eventually removed from the platform.
Where Are The Funds Now?
Within hours of the Friendsies NFT project announcing it was “pausing” and deleting all social media accounts, suspicions of a carpet-pulling spread quickly online.
ZachXBT, a pseudonymous on-chain sleuth, confirmed that the transfer of 10,000 NFTs generated $5.3 million in ETH, although the price of ETH gradually decreased during the minting process. It is unclear if and how the money was spent.
With $5.3m @friendsies_ai hard carpet before today it remains unclear how the funds will be used.
No announcements since September, no community cash, and no P2E games.
The team blamed “market volatility” as the reason. pic.twitter.com/FM8ytum4Ur
โ ZachXBT (@zachxbt) February 21, 2023
In response to a tweet by @Zachxbt, @ArkhamInterl responded:
“Btw when these people say “market volatility” they mean “we bagheld ETH down 70% and then sold it below” and linked to the transaction history below:
According to ZachXBT, the developer claimed in the plan that “1.25% of all royalties (47 ETH) was intended to return to the owner,” but this never happened, and the roadmap was removed from Discord to ensure that there was no evidence. that.
NFT investor, Tmagled, confirmed that a year after being targeted for negative comments about the venture, the harshly warned carpet pull is finally happening.
LOL so it’s a year later after @farokh call me a bad person for making fun of Friendsies for the upcoming carpet, I know they will beโฆ RUGGED ๐ณ๐
fake-rokh even called the founder of friends as one of his longest friends ๐ฌ๐
โ tmagled ๐ ๐ฆ (@tmagled) February 21, 2023
During the initial stages of the collection, Twitter users accused Farokh, the host of Radio Rug, and Jen Stark, a generative artist, of promoting the collection on social media.
Prominent NFT personalities, such as Farokh, are alleged to have been early supporters of the concept and are said to have made millions of dollars from early sales.
To Leave Or Not – That’s The Question
In response to the backlash they received, the Friendsies team tweeted to reassure supporters that they have no plans to attract investors:
หแตห – Dear Community,
It is clear that we have upset many of you with the nature of our announcements, and perhaps we did not handle it in the best way. To be very clear, we are not abandoning FRIENDSIES. The goal is just to be transparent and communicate with
โ fRiENDSiES (@fRiENDSiES_Ai) February 21, 2023
Since then, the Twitter account of the project has been restored, and the creator of the project strongly denied that he “left” the initiative.
Legal Action in the Works?
Meanwhile, the former head of NFT products for Mastercard and now CEO of Web3 social application startup Joincircle, Satvik Sethi, said that the founder of the project has been inactive on the Discord server after “pausing” the announcement.
NFT holders are currently considering potential next steps in between, such as ways to support community members or even potential legal action for unfulfilled commitments.
-Images shown are from CryptoStars