The popular Goblintown ETH collection continuously gains traction despite last year’s non-fungible token (NFT) market downturn. However, the team behind the project are facing accusations over “rugging” its holders.
Truth Labs replaced its NFT project’s artwork with animated GIFs featuring a middle finger accompanied by three more middle fingers, among a sarcastic message that protests against marketplaces implementing low royalty fees.
Quick Takes:
- Truth Labs advocates for higher creator royalties, responding to significant marketplaces like OpenSea and Blur lowering fees to 0.5%.
- As a consequence, the company deactivates Goblintown’s trading on Blur and OpenSea. Moreover, it moves the NFTs to a new smart contract enforcing total royalties.
- The NFT curators promise to restore the original artwork to holders’ wallets by Sunday.
Goblintown’s Artwork Changes
All 10,000 Goblintown NFTs now showcase middle fingers reading, “Forget royalties. Forget supporting builders and creatives. Flipping is the essence of Web3’s uniqueness. Salute the flipper, and dismiss the community. Long live the slow rug.”
These sudden changes occur as Truth Labs’ ongoing advocacy for upholding creator royalties. The curators made the changes in response to significant marketplaces like OpenSea and Blur implementing 0.5% creator royalty fees instead of 5% to 10%.
The curators behind the popular project took to Twitter to announce its updates and reasons for doing so:
Truth Labs declared that it has deactivated all listing, bidding, or trading of Goblintown NFTs on the secondary marketplaces. Subsequently, transferring all digital assets to a new smart contract that enforces total creator royalties on the blockchain. The smart contracts comprise the code that enables autonomous decentralized apps (dapps) and NFT projects to function.
The Communities Response
Over abruptly changing the NFTs’ artworks and failing to live up to its promises, Truth Labs faces accusations of “rugging” the project.
Community members, including this one, are voicing their concerns on Twitter:
Not helping matters, the team behind the NFT project already upholds a reputation for rugging its less prominent collections, IlluminatiNFT and The 187.
Truth Labs announced that it will automatically distribute a new version of each affected NFT—featuring the original artwork—to the holders’ wallets by Sunday.
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