The Minecraft-based blockchain project Blockverse has earned the ire of fans and some negative media attention after more than $1.2 million in digital tokens were bought by users, only to have them deleted just days later. While many suspected that this was an active scam; pumping the value of its native token, selling as many as possible, and doing a cut and run, the Blockverse team insists that this isn’t the case.
The real reason according to the team? Sustained harassment, bullying and threats.
Originally billed as an “on-chain Ethereum NFT that enables a unique P2E on Minecraft”, the Blockverse developers haven’t exactly endeared themselves to their supporters with this excuse. But, according to the team’s statement on Twitlonger, these threats led to a ‘panicked’ team to delete its discord server, followed by its website and game server.
“18 hours in after launch, the FUD quickly descended into harassment, threats, and doxxing. The team noticed all this and panicked, deleting the discord server on impulse. Everything else was closed to prevent the continuation of harassment that had occurred so far… There is absolutely no reason for us to leave permanently, as all the technical work and infrastructure for the project thus far has already been put in place.”
The team continues on to assert that it has not abandoned the project; adding that the infrastructure is in place and the team remains committed to it. But what about those users that bought tokens and NFTs?
“We’d like to apologize to our supporters and loyal patrons for the inconvenience we’ve caused. Staked Blockverse tokens are to be immediately unstaked[sic] so owners will have full access and control over everything they purchased, and the Discord and MC server are set to be open in the next few days.”
Community feedback via Twitter has not been positive or supportive; many commenters have expressed distrust towards the community. With this said, there is room for scepticism, especially when considering that the team, in an act of panic, deleted its servers…
It’s safe to say that Non-Fungible Tokens have undergone (and is still undergoing) massive growth and investor interest. Like the crypto boom of 2016, however, NFTs are facing a substantial backlash and scepticism from mainstream audiences. One of the reasons is, of course, how vulnerable they are to manipulation, scams and malicious actors.
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