DegenTown rugpull and Magic Eden's censorship question mark
The featured NFT collection on Solana is DegenTown surprise rugpull. The community continues to ask big questions about Magic Eden's project moderation process.
DegenTown is a heavily backed NFT collection from Magic Eden – the leading NFT marketplace on Solana. The project since its launch has received a lot of attention but also a lot of market.
At the end of July 2022, the project's Twitter account was hacked, the link on the bio account was changed to a scam link. At that time, the user clicks on the link, is redirected to an interface asking to approve a fraudulent contract and loses all the money in the wallet.
On July 26, the project team announced that they would refund the stolen money.
s sᴛᴀʀᴛᴇᴅ… ᴡᴇ ᴀʀᴇ sᴛɪʟʟ sᴏʟ sᴏᴍᴇ s ᴛʜᴇsᴇ ᴘʀᴏᴄᴇssᴇᴅ ᴛʜᴇ . — (@DegentownNFTs) July 26, 2022
“We are initiating refunds. Still calculating the SOL value of NFTs lost in some wallets. This process can take up to a week.”
But then, not after that, because they decided to rug pull after a series of livestreams on Twitter Spaces on 11/8. (?!)
It wasn't until almost a week later, on August 17, that Magic Eden made an official announcement about this incident.
We hear the community loud and clear about the @DegentownNFTs collection that launched on Launchpad and have been working behind the scenes to reach a resolution with the original founders and current collection owners. Our full response: https://t.co/6AFI06cNsn — Magic Eden (@MagicEden) August 18, 2022
“We are aware of the DegenTown incident previously released on our Launchpad that was rugpull. Magic Eden is working to find a solution with the original founders of the project and with current NFT holders.”
Specifically, Magic Eden said that it is still urging the DegenTown team to refund the money earned from the NFT sale. Part of the money was refunded from 0xLerk – one of the co-founders of the project. But the rest is still being held by another member, NFTRAmo, and this person has not shown any attitude.
First, part of the money will be used to compensate victims who suffered damage in the case of clicking on a fake link on Twitter. This refund was originally promised by NFTRAmo, but he didn't deliver. Due to the urgent situation, Magic Eden will soon find a third party to help them analyze lost wallets for damage assessment and refunds.
However, Magic Eden's actions did not appease the outrage of the community. People still criticize the censorship process of this leading NFT platform Solana. Why are there so many "sticky" projects open for sale?
Looking back a bit, when promoting the launchpad DegenTown, NFTRamo was announced as a project advisor. But it turns out that this is just a trick to "evade the law" and "avoid" Magic Eden. This character is a key member who has access to DegenTown's wallet and funds.
It is known that the current censorship process was born after a "case study" was the rug pull of the Balloonsville project in February of this year. But Magic Eden still let "the net" of other rug pull projects like Reptilian Renegades or Internet Fox, causing a lot of anger in the NFT community on Solana.
Aug 20, 2022
