CNN "shut down" its own NFT project just four months after its launch
Popular media outlet CNN announced it would shut down its NFT project less than four months after its launch.
Basically in June 2021, CNN kicked off the NFT project with the theme “Vault by CNN: Moments That Changed Us”, which serves as an NFT Marketplace that will provide collectors with the opportunity to own a share historic news moments from the company's 41-year growth.
Vault by CNN was originally minted on the Flow blockchain, with CNN retaining the NFT copyright and ownership of the content provided. However, until earlier this week, CNN released a statement that it would no longer develop and maintain the community or the project.
However, on Discord, CNN said it plans to compensate the thousands of collectors who joined the company in the above NFT test with distributions based on the NFT purchase price of each wallet collected on 06/10.
Additionally, in a separate announcement from CNN by employee “Jason” the compensation distribution will be either FLOW tokens or stablecoins deposited into each user’s wallet. He also notes that the actual media for the NFT will still be stored in IPFS, a distributed file system, which means they will continue to be available even if CNN's NFT website disappears.
“We are currently working on the details, but expect the distribution to be approximately 20% of the initial mint price for each Vault NFT owned.”
This is actually quite a surprise move by CNN because just last month, CNN was still pushing community members to buy more FLOW so they could have access to events like the NFT Art of the Vote collection. The upcoming US President is scheduled to release on November 8.
Although there is a significant difference between the NFT Vault by CNN's asking price on the market, many pieces in the collection were minted for as little as $10 when first released, indicating that it will take quite a while. so that CNN could refund the proposed investor. As a result, many users in the project's 1,400-plus Discord community expressed dissatisfaction with the decision. A member named RichardRazo complained:
“As an investor, I don't know if I can break even in the next few years. CNN can share why they think 20% is fair. They're hoping that we can break even or at least be profitable within a few years, right? If not, then this looks like a rug pull.”
However, as of the time of writing, no specific reason has been given for the shutdown of Vault by CNN. What's interesting, however, is that this NFT project has been around for about 16 times longer than the attempt for a CNN Plus streaming product that launched in March 2022 and "frozen" exactly a month later.
FoxCryptoNews summary
Oct 12, 2022
