NeoNexus founder pulls the plug on popular Metaverse NFT project

The founding father of NeoNexus, a Solana-based NFT venture, has acknowledged the group is not creating the venture, blaming the drop in Solana (SOL) costs for the choice.

The venture’s founder, Jack Shi, took to the official Twitter account for NeoNexus, tweeting at 2 pm UTC on March 21 that it was not persevering with the “wholesome growth” of the venture, 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 not proceed wholesome growth of the NEONEXUS venture. We want to hand over the venture to our neighborhood, or a community-selected occasion for takeover if that is possible / attainable.

I am deeply sorry,
Jack

— neonexus_world (@neonexus_world) March 21, 2022

Estimates suggest that the venture raised round 25,000 SOL for its NFT mints, which at right this moment’s costs could be value $2.2 million. With SOL costs climbing to over $150 across the time of the token mints, the venture might have made an estimated $3.5 to $4.5 million.

NeoNexus is a Metaverse venture, that includes each a deliberate utility and governance coin, it had sold over 4,000 “property NFTs”, with the venture planning to supply an additional 6,000 property NFTs, and character, automobile, and accent tokens deliberate for the long run. The venture at the moment has over 13,000 members in its Discord channel.

In a publish on the venture’s Discord, Shi wrote that the market situations have been accountable for the group halting growth, with the venture’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 venture 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 based on 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 top of March, and requested if a neighborhood takeover was attainable.

Many commenters have accused the venture of committing a “slow-rug”, build up the venture solely to exit, and take the funds months later.

Rattling that’s an enormous gradual 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, displaying the founder sitting in a supercar and boasting of using in a Lamborghini. Zachxbt used these pictures to query how the venture might increase tens of millions solely to expire of funds in just a few months.

So this venture raised $4m from a number of NFT drops and someway 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

Numerous NFT tasks marketed their very own choices when responding to the NeoNexus tweet in an try to alleviate the losses some traders 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 venture and Unlock Defi have been offline. Cointelegraph reached out to Shi and former workers for remark however didn’t instantly hear again.