NFT holders question the reputation of SkyArk and AOFverse

A growing chorus of crypto influencers and NFT whales calling out what they consider questionable game projects on former Twitter platform X has emerged in recent days. While it kicked off with game developer SkyArk Chronicles, the rage has most recently been directed at mobile web3 game developer Army of Fortune aka AOFverse.

What’s triggered the latter has been the launch of AOFverse’s AFG token, with only a small allocation – including with vesting – going to NFT holders. The amount is far from the sizeable airdrop they had expected, which has caused NFT whale Dingaling rage-quitting and dumping 143 AOFverse NFTs, amounting to 6% of the total supply of Founder’s Keys. Consequently, the floor price of keys has dropped from 0.5 ETH to under 0.18 ETH ($400).

Dumped 143 @AOFverse Founders keys after the team's latest update, taking a ~60E loss overall

I usually just let NFTs in my wallet go to zero but teams like this that don't appreciate their community don't belong in Web3. Why even launch an NFT collection?

Good luck 👋

— dingaling (@dingalingts) January 29, 2024

The trouble surrounding AOFverse surfaced a day after Singapore-based game developer SkyArk Chronicles successfully completed the launch of its genesis NFT mint.

The mint, in which wallets could bid from 0.2 ETH up to 0.6 ETH in the attempt to get an allocation of the 8,000-strong collection, initially proved popular. With $115 million-worth of ETH pledged for a maximum of $15 million-worth of NFT, it was one of the largest NFT launches since Yuga Labs’ Otherside mint in 2022 or Ember Sword’s original $203 million land bid in 2021.

A few weeks prior to the mint, however, SkyArk had announced a $15 million funding round lead by Binance Labs via X. Less than a day later, as BlockchainGamer.biz was searching for the initial post, it had been deleted.

What’s now apparent is this $15 million wasn’t a new funding round, but the company’s total funding to-date, including the 2021 round, which Binance Labs did lead. However it complained of being included in what it thought was a new funding round, asking SkyArk to clarify the situation.

As this didn’t happen, Binance eventually published a “unilateral clarification”, which just happened to drop hours after the successful NFT mint.

SkyArk has since apologised, more than once, but at this stage the damage looks done. The takeaway appears to be that especially in a bull market, some elements of the blockchain gaming sector need to be more laser-focused on trust than price.