Some members of the NFT community have accused MekaVerse of rigging their recent and highly anticipated MakeVerse drop.
Photo: MekaVerse
The MekaVerse NFT drop has to be one of the most-anticipated artwork of the year. Fans have been anticipating the drop since August 30 after getting a sneak peek through their Discord and Twitter accounts. According to CryptoSlam, MekaVerse has bagged more than $120 million in sales.
MekaVerse is heavily inspired by a Japanese mecha anime series, ‘Mobile Suit Gundam.’ The valuable images are 3D rendered and Gundam-inspired. None of them are similar to another. Each image has its unique composition and color palette. If you don’t know what a MekaVerse is, it is a collection of 8,888 NFT profile pictures. The ‘avatar’ format is similar to those in Bored Ape Yacht Club, Pudgy Penguins and CryptoPunks.
A raffle was held to secure spots on October 6. NFT collectors could then register to buy one or two NFTs: 172,876 unique wallet holders registered for the closed mint raffle. MekaVerse sold 8,593 NFTs each at a fee of 0.2 ETH($725) during the minting window. According to the team shared that the unsold NFTs will be used for future promotions and giveaways.
The MekaVerse NFT Drop Controversy
Only 24 hours after registering, some people in the NFT community took to their Twitter accounts to flex their lucky wins. The minters then began looking to flip their NFTs for an early profit with an established floor price of 4 ETH.
Some members of the NFT community have claimed that NFT rigged the lottery process. Instead of the distribution of the rare Mekas being random, bots were allegedly used to gift the Mekas to certain insiders. The rare artwork began trading at OpenSea, and at this point, no one knew how the pieces looked. The collection, however, was revealed only a week later and many people in the NFT community accused the team of rigging the launch.
NFT personality, Beanie, shared on his Twitter account that several accounts were using insider information to purchase the rare Mekas before MekaVerse revealed them.
Beanie tweeted,
“People are really stupid to be buying this MekaVerse shit. This is just one account of many that I’ve found that’s using insider information of the metadata to cherry-pick ultra-rare and legendary pre-reveals from clueless plebs. Look at the bid history.
Solidarity developer, bagelface claimed to have inspected the smart contracts. They said MekaVerse could have distributed the rarest Mekas manually to specifically picked addresses, the opposite of the intended ‘fair’ distribution process. Bagelface claimed that although they had no proof, the lack of evidence that the distribution process was fair should serve as proof. @bagelface tweeted,
“@MekaVerse just straight up minted specific token IDs to specific addresses without any attempt at randomness… This is so incredibly sus.”
There have also been copyright concerns. Allegedly, MekaVerse uses similar artwork to Gundam Genuine.
What are NFTs?
NFTs are a relatively new occurrence in the crypto industry. So what exactly are NFTs? NFT stands for a non-fungible token. Non-fungible tokens are items that have no identical substitutes, those that are unique. NFTs represent physical objects digital art such as memes, photos, GIFs, tweets, videos or audio files. The only difference between NFTs and other crypto is that NFTs can’t be exchanged directly.
NFTs continue to grow popular and more valuable as time passes. Why? You may ask, because of ownership. When one owns artwork, they have the exclusive rights to use it in any way they please. NFTs are popular among investors, gamers, and collectors.