An “unofficial” Minecraft NFT collection is now the most recent initiative that turned out to be a rug pull (but the founders claim otherwise).
Recently, the project called “Blockverse”, which offered an on-chain Ethereum NFT that claimed to support a unique P2E on Minecraft “like no other,” (also called play-to-earn PvP Minecraft server), appeared to have sold around $1.2 million in crypto tokens before disappearing.
At first, Blockverse issued 10,000 non-fungible tokens or NFTs all valued at $124 each (appr. 0.05 ETH at the time of the sale). All of these NFTs or digital collectibles had been sold out in a few minutes. However, only a few days following the sale, the initiative’s creators decided to exit from the project and deleted the initiative’s website, game server, and even the Discord server.
The creators or founders of the project have allegedly disappeared completely (with all the funds of course).
And just after several days of silence/inactivity, the Blockverse team appeared again on Twitter to try to explain and apologize for their conduct. The project’s founding team said that that they were forced to close down their operations because of harassment.
The founders noted:
“The FUD quickly descended into harassment, threats, and doxxing. The team noticed all this and panicked, deleting the discord server on impulse. Everything else was closed to prevent the continuation of harassment that had occurred so far. Even then, the plan was to reopen once everyone had time to calm down.”
They further claimed:
“There is absolutely no reason for us to leave permanently, as all the technical work and infrastructure for the project thus far has already been put in place. It was actually more work to take things down than to leave it up, but again, everything was done in the interest of protecting personal safety.”
The founding team also noted that they’re quite “disappointed that the community jumped to false accusations so quickly, but we still believe in our project, and in order for everyone else to regain that faith, [they] are in talks with professionals in the space about how we may proceed.”
The project’s user base, however, doesn’t appear to be fully convinced with their explanation. The project is now being called a scam by many people on social media.
The initiative’s community have reportedly been trying negotiate with the original Blockverse developers so that they can gain control of the project.
The developers also noted:
“Needless to say, our team is fully on board, and we’re currently waiting for discussions to conclude. We’d like to apologize to our supporters and loyal patrons for the inconvenience we’ve caused. Staked Blockverse tokens are to be immediately unstaked so owners will have full access and control over everything they purchased, and the Discord and MC server are set to be open in the next few days. Updates will continue on twitter in the vein of continued transparency.”