Soltopia’s Second ‘Blatant Cash Grab’ NFT Collection Sends SolBear Prices Plummeting

Soltopia’s plan to launch a second NFT collection and raise 100,000 SOL, just 3 days after raising 30,000 SOL from their first NFT launch, lit the fuse on an explosion of community anger.

Second Time Unlucky

Non-Fungible Token (NFT)  project Soltopia sparked anger from its own community when the team announced plans to launch a second ‘cash grab’ NFT collection just days after the first. Following the successful launch of 10,000 ‘SolBears’ on Solana on Tuesday, the price of the cartoon teddies surged. 

With the price floor (minimum unit price) of SolBears approaching 30 SOL, the project announced plans to launch 10,000 SolCats. The project also explained that unlike SolBears which were 3 SOL each to mint, SolCats would cost a far higher 10 SOL each. 

‘Liquidated all my “solbears” team is running some 2nd cash grab, idiots’ popular crypto trader, “Big Dog“ (@MoonOverlord) proclaimed on Twitter. “Had the best PFP on solana and still decide to scam lol.” 

The fury from the community was immediate and provoked a sell-off of bears which crashed the price floor from close to 30 SOL to 1 SOL. Another Twitter user said they intended to avoid anything the SolBears team was involved with from now on, describing the project as a ‘blatant cash grab’. On the company Discord server, some of the community feedback was more pointed as well. 

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Further Graphic Problems

While some members of the Soltopia expressed their displeasure in graphic terms, other members of the Soltopia community were more concerned with the graphic stylings of the SolBears themselves. 

Several community members pointed out minting issues that produced bizarre results. It seems that some of the algorithms used to create the NFTs malfunctioned and minted.

As one unhappy SolBear owner said, ‘Was this reaaaaly high enough effort? We paid them millions and they couldn’t even get the eyes to go over the hair?’ 

Layer eyes and snake hair aside, there are a number of other bear attributes which seem to cause layer ordering problems, including (but not limited to) bubblegum, freckles, masks, hats, glasses, smoke, eyes, and hoods. When applied in certain combinations, these attributes can all produce glitched bears. 

While some users might hope that this makes their bears rarer, glitched SolBears are not, in fact, uncommon.

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Community Twitter Reviews Are In

‘I no longer support solbears and I highly recommend against minting solcats or any future mints/buying solbears. disappointing but we knew the risks.’ – ronbubble crypto‍

‘LMAO ANYONE WHO GOES FOR THIS PLZ USE A BURNER WALLET’ – sbf fan_1999 on the SolCats giveaway.

‘SolBears looks like an absolute dumpster fire.’ – GoodSam‍

‘Honestly artistically I thought the bears were one of the weakest overhyped NFT projects.  They look pretty lame like a child drew it…’ – LostBoy‍

‘Most hilarious implosion I’ve seen in the space’ – Sam Jones‍

‘Lmao. Who was on quality control.’ – Squirrel Master‍

‘this shit will never, ever stop being funny to me’ – This Is The JPEG‘

‘Most annoying dev I’ve ever seen and painful to watch.’ – fuseflow‍

‘Disappointing. Greed won’ – Zillion_Bucks

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Trust Lost

Following the backlash from the Soltopia community, the company has now backtracked on plans to launch SolCats for 10 SOL and will instead offer them for 0 SOL to SolBear holders. Despite this, the company has a long way to go to rebuild burned bridges.

Trust that is easily lost is often far harder to regain. The project must now deal not only with a loss of trust from its community but partners and other projects within the Solana community.‍

Solana Sneks was among the fellow Solana NFT projects to distance themselves from the project after initially supporting SolBears. The Solana Sneks team clarified on Twitter that ‘we’re not affiliated with Solbears’ and ‘we did not know the price per mint of SolCats.’

‘10 SOL for a mint a week later is yikes,’ the SolanaSneks team added.

More worryingly for Soltopia was the response of the NFT gallery Solanart. The major Solana NFT gallery confirmed that they would not be listing SolCats and did not recommend their purchase.

‘Following recent events, we will not be listing @TheBearGangNFT next collection,’ said Solanart before issuing an even more chilling warning: ‘We also recommend everyone to avoid minting any [SolCats] as there is a high risk of rug associated with it.’

While Soltopia appeared set to become a huge NFT success story earlier this week, the team quickly managed to turn things around, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Soltopia now has a mountain to climb if they’re going to make it in the longer term

Source : bsc.news