The founding father of NeoNexus, a Solana-based NFT undertaking, has said the staff is now not creating the undertaking, blaming the drop in Solana (SOL) costs for the choice.
The undertaking’s founder, Jack Shi, took to the official Twitter account for NeoNexus, tweeting at 2 pm UTC on March 21 that it was now not persevering with the “wholesome growth” of the undertaking, including they want to hand it over for the neighborhood to develop.
It’s with a heavy coronary heart that we should inform you that we are able to now not proceed wholesome growth of the NEONEXUS undertaking. We want to hand over the undertaking to our neighborhood, 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 undertaking raised round 25,000 SOL for its NFT mints, which at right now’s costs can be value $2.2 million. With SOL costs climbing to over $150 across the time of the token mints, the undertaking might have made an estimated $3.5 to $4.5 million.
NeoNexus is a Metaverse undertaking, that includes each a deliberate utility and governance coin, it had sold over 4,000 “property NFTs”, with the undertaking planning to supply an extra 6,000 property NFTs, and character, automobile, and accent tokens deliberate for the long run. The undertaking at the moment has over 13,000 members in its Discord channel.
In a publish on the undertaking’s Discord, Shi wrote that the market situations had been in charge for the staff halting growth, with the undertaking’s funds used to pay wages, tech infrastructure, enterprise charges, and taxes.
“It has been extremely troublesome making an attempt to develop and proceed our undertaking 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 area has decreased.”
Market situations over the previous few months have been uneven, with the value of SOL falling over 50% in 3 months in line with information 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 father or mother firm, Unlock Defi, had been laid off as of the tip of March, and requested if a neighborhood takeover was potential.
Many commenters have accused the undertaking of committing a “slow-rug”, build up the undertaking solely to exit, and take the funds months later.
Rattling that’s an enormous sluggish 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, exhibiting the founder sitting in a supercar and boasting of using in a Lamborghini. Zachxbt used these photos to query how the undertaking might elevate tens of millions solely to expire of funds in a number of months.
So this undertaking raised $4m from a number of NFT drops and one way or the other 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
Varied NFT tasks marketed their very own choices when responding to the NeoNexus tweet in an try to alleviate the losses some buyers might have shouldered because of the 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 undertaking and Unlock Defi had been offline. Cointelegraph reached out to Shi and former workers for remark however didn’t instantly hear again.
