Earning $66 million in 24 hours, the most expensive avatar in history with complaints from the community

Written by: 0x21, Rhythm BlockBeats  

In the NFT field where emotions are slowing down, if you want to say something It has absolute popularity in the near future, and none other than RTFKT.

As the first project to bring sneaker culture into the NFT field, RTFKT has been dubbed numerous titles, "Metaverse Luxury Company", "NFT World's Nike" and so on. All of them represent collectors' recognition of their value.

Someone once commented on RTFKT: "If you ever wanted a pair of AirJordan when you were young, then your child will dream of a pair of RTFKT"

(If you wanted to own a pair of AirJordans when you were a kid, your child will want a pair of RTFKTs when he is born.)

On the morning of December 1, RTFKT-CloneX successfully completed the issuance. From the data point of view, this round of NFT issuance brought RTFKT an income of 15,000 ETH. At around $66 million, it seemed like a perfect deal.

But is that really the case?

Comments in the community are completely different, "So greedy, this project is dead, it's time to move on", "Unbelievable, Shame on your team"... Similar comments flooded the community. The well-known brand’s first NFT offering was much different than expected.

What happened?

At 6 am on November 30, 2021, Beijing time, RTFKT's first avatar series, CloneX, will be released as scheduled. In addition to the 11,133 NFTs provided to whitelist members, the other 8,367 NFTs were supposed to be sold in the form of Dutch auctions. The initial price of the auction was 3ETH, and the price was reduced by 0.1ETH every half hour. No reserve price was set. RTFKT's confidence in the brand can be seen.

However, within 2 hours of the release, sales were less than one-third . Then the official stopped the sale, and said on the official Twitter of RTFKT Studio that the website was attacked by hackers, so the official had to stop the sale. Until all issues are resolved and re-released on December 1st at 10AM. Ushered in the dissatisfaction of a large number of users. As of the suspension of the sale, RTFKT-CloneX has sold about 4,000 NFTs including pre-sales.

There are not a few projects that have stopped selling due to sale accidents, and most NFT project owners will choose to re-sell for safety reasons. It seems understandable, and this kind of safety emergency measures will be understood by buyers in most cases, but why does RTFKT's mistakes arouse public outrage?

CloneX or ClownX

At the same time that RTFKT stopped the sale, the Discord community and Twitter fans began to discuss the matter. A large number of investors believed that the sale website of RTFKT was not hacked , just because the project party’s price was too high, and the sales volume within two hours did not meet expectations, so they pretended to be hacked and readjusted their release strategy.

For a while, negative news spread across various communities, most of the opinions focused on "RTFKT looks ugly", "want to make money but no one is responsible for managing it" etc. At the same time, in order to prevent negative information from fermenting, RTFKT not only did not give any explanation, but also shut down the speech function of all Discord users for 16 hours on the grounds of "to prevent community users from being scammed". You must know that NFT projects have always been community-driven. RTFKT gave a very common reason, and it will not open again until "the community administrator wakes up."

Because of this ridiculous reason, many users feel that the project team they admire is so unprofessional. As a result, community users who were dissatisfied with the suspension of the sale flocked to RTFKT's official Twitter immediately. Some people registered a new ENS domain name clownx (clown x) for CloneX as a mockery, and some people said that the project party was too greedy and broke the hearts of fans.

The twists and turns of CloneX

From the announcement of the project to the sale of CloneX, it can be described as twists and turns. The RTFKT team became famous for bringing sneaker culture to the NFT field, and because of the popularity of the metaverse concept, the prices of NFT collections related to RTFKT have also been rising.

The release of CloneX this time is naturally attracting much attention. RTFKT’s first series of avatar NFT, full 3D rendering, full bone binding, and for Each character provides a virtual space. RTFKT Studio has also done a lot of publicity for it, such as the screen projection in Times Square in New York, the cooperation with Japanese fashion master Takashi Murakami and so on.

CloneX has become the focus of attention, but it also brings mixed reviews. Some people think that the model is excellent and full of sincerity. Some people think that the 2D style of Japanese comics is turned into 3D, and the style of painting is weird. But no matter what kind of speech it is, it can't stop the popularity of CloneX.

CloneX, which was originally scheduled to be released on the eve of October, has been postponed to mid-October due to technical problems. Because of the model problem, it was postponed from mid-October to early November, and finally it was finally released on December 1st.

Because of the delay in progress, many users lost their patience, and "Ace Pigeon" became the community's new title for RTFKT. Even though all CloneXs have been sold, because the official opening date of the blind box has not been announced, many users still speculate that CloneX is still "unfinished".

The most expensive series of avatars in history

During the re-sale event on December 1, RTFKT Studio changed the sale method of CloneX from Dutch auction to direct sale in 2ETH. In the end, of the total 20,000 CloneX, 11,133 were provided to whitelist users at a price of 0.05, the other 7,367 were sold at 2ETH, and the remaining 1,000 were distributed to community users as compensation. CloneX expects to earn about 15,000 ETH this time, which is about 66 million US dollars.

This also makes CloneX the most expensive avatar series in history. (Previously, Meebits and The Mutant Ape Yacht Club were sold at 2.5ETH and 3ETH using Dutch auctions, respectively.)

In order to express apology, the remaining 1,000 CloneXs were randomly given away as compensation to buyers who participated in the Dutch auction the day before. After readjusting the release strategy, the remaining CloneXs were sold out within 40 minutes. The compensation of RTFKT Studio did not get the user's understanding, but once again confirmed the user's previous guess - RTFKT wanted to earn too much.

Of course, the production process of CloneX is much more difficult than most 2D avatar series. Split the painting, and finally generate it automatically through the system.

Compared with 2D images, the effects of light and shadow mapping in 3D space on different materials are different. Therefore, during the production process, CloneX automatically combines Part of it will be very difficult to implement, and an NFT with 20,000 different features also requires huge rendering capabilities. Also take into account the bone rigs that come with 3D characters.

But even so, it cannot cover up the stains caused by a series of behaviors of RTFKT during the sale process. NFT started as a community, emphasizing the concept of community. Players rely on NFT to gain a sense of social identity, but RTFKT’s ban on the Discord platform is undoubtedly extremely absurd. The community no longer exists, what is left of the value of NFT?

As a comment on the official Twitter of RTFKT Studio said: "Since you want to do hundreds of millions of business, please be professional."

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