Cipher Punks NFT Collection Shuts Down & Gives Back All the Funds
It has been three days since we launched our Cipher Punks NFT collection. We were proud of what we accomplished with this collection by sharing a historical story of the CypherPunk movement in the form of NFTs.
However, it came to our notice that many Cypher Punks didn’t like the idea of their images being used as NFTs and digital drawings. We were not aware of the likeness laws in NFTs as the market is not regulated. It’s our mistake. We have to own up to it.
So, considering Cypher Punks’ concerns and heavy backlash on Twitter, we decided to completely shut down the collection and refund every single penny anyone has spent, including the gas fee.
We Wanted to Celebrate Cypher Punks
Our purpose with this collection was to educate the young community in crypto about Cypher Punks and how significant they were to this date to the evolution of blockchain technology. The contributions made by Cypher Punks not only helped spawn a new technology but also developed a new wave of public interest towards cryptography for decades.
With Cipher Punks NFT collection, we wanted to share those moments and remind people who paved the path for cryptocurrencies to become a reality. We also wanted to donate 50% of the profits to organizations and communities focused on bitcoin core development.
Unfortunately, many Cypher Punks were against this idea and didn’t want to participate in any way. We respect that. We really do. So we apologize to each and every Cypher Punk for not taking consent and creating your NFTs.
We Took Immediate Action
We recognized our mistake and wanted to sort it out as quickly as possible. We first addressed all Cypher Punks issues regarding the collection. We removed and burned their NFTs from the list. Also, the majority of the supply is still untouched. So we burned 90% of the NFT supply we had control over, meaning in our account. The rest is in possession of collectors.
We wanted to delete the entire collection from the Open Sea marketplace, but we encountered an error. We sent out a tweet notifying them to take down the collection. As we have not received any reply from the OS team, we provided all collectors a refund claiming a window of 24 hours.
Refunds and Charity Donation
Since we cannot delete all NFTs, we manually buy them back from collectors and burn them ourselves. We let everyone know that they should list their Cipher Punks for 0.07 WETH. We will also pay for the gas fees from our own pocket. We collected 5.8 WETH from the primary sale. So far, we removed 250 NFTs, burned 130, and refunded more than 2.5 WETH.
The window is open for the next 24 hours. And if someone fails to list their NFT or claim refunds, we will be donating the remaining balance to WikiLeaks. So we want to make sure everyone understands that the Cipher Punks collection is not a cash grab. We do not gain anything monetarily. We had good intentions to help spread the story of Cipher Punks. Though this is not what we expected, we have to accept it and move on.
We also wanted to notice a fake collection using our name and images, trying to defame our brand for all wrong reasons. This is a defamation attack. And we are not going to tolerate this anymore. We have included this as well in our DMCA notice takedown. Please do not interact with this collector nor make any kind of purchases. We are not responsible as we can’t remove it unless OS users report it.
https://twitter.com/ItsBlockchain/status/1475740042496647169
Once again, we want to apologize to everyone involved. We could have done better. And we will from next time. That’s a promise. Thank you.
Update: The collection has been taken down by opensea.
Links:
Real Collection: https://opensea.io/collection/cipher-punks
Transaction Details: https://polygonscan.com/address/0xC0855f464261832aa43f1d9d9E1cC2aCeEF7c54b#tokentxnsErc721
Buy Back/Burn Proof: https://opensea.io/collection/cipher-punks?tab=activity
