Supporters of this new play-to-earn game won’t be playing any games or earning any money just yet. From the looks of things, 2023 will have a lot of stories about people getting defrauded by different NFT projects.
For example, Blockverse, an NFT project which promised investors that it would be developing and releasing a PVP Minecraft game where the players would be paid for playing, was sold out in less than 9 minutes and brought in roughly $1.2 million.
But after making all that money, the project has gone dark, both on its website and its social media channels, which have lost signs of any activity. From the looks of things, it looks to be another rug-pulling scam.
Even with this whole scandal going on, the Blockverse NFT project is still listed and being traded on OpeanSea, which is the most popular and most trusted NFT marketplace. It’s interesting, though, that OpenSea has not given any statement yet.
Even staunch supporters of NFTs are not happy with this development. In a recent post, a Twitter user who goes by the username @NFTethics states that the project sold out quickly in less than 8 minutes and earned around 500 ETH, and it made about 790 ETH from secondary sales.
This whole controversy has many wondering if a central authority should be established to approve all NFT projects before they are listed in various marketplaces. This shines a light on how bothersome these rug-pulling schemes are becoming. Interestingly, having a centralized authority goes against the whole idea behind cryptocurrencies and other related fields, but losing a huge sum of money to some random person online has a way of shifting one's perspective.
Do you believe crypto or NFTs should have a centralized authority to help control fraud? Please share your thoughts on this subject in the comment section below.
