💨 Clones go poof

Hey frens. It’s Thursday. Long intro time!

I find it interesting that big “Web2” game publishers don’t want to bring their most valuable and well-known IP to crypto. Instead, we’ve gotten lesser-known franchises, IPs being resurrected from obscurity, and others I’ve never heard of until they’re brought into crypto (like Sangokushi Taisen).

To me, that’s not exactly a great sign. 

It means crypto remains a niche, and mainstream game publishers still want to treat it like one and take less risk. SEGA doesn’t want to put Sonic on the blockchain — instead, they’re willing to license lesser-known franchises to crypto startups that build the crypto game versions. Ubisoft doesn’t seem to want to do a crypto Assassin’s Creed, either, but given the backlash to those Tom Clancy NFTs back in 2021, I don’t necessarily blame them.

Unsurprisingly, the upcoming Ubisoft Might & Magic game using Immutable already has people complaining on Reddit and YouTube about the fact that it’ll have blockchain elements (one commenter called it “dead on arrival” while another accused Ubisoft of being “out of touch”). While Might and Magic might be known to some, it’s not exactly a contemporary franchise known to younger gamers.

If I’m being honest about crypto gaming right now, it still feels like we’re waiting for mainstream gamer sentiment to dramatically shift course — without really doing much to try to change it.

— Kate Irwin

P.S. Let me know how you’re liking The Drop! Send me an email at [email protected].

RTFKT Clones disappear in migration

RTFKT, Nike’s abandoned digital brand pronounced “artifact,” lost its CloneX art overnight.

The art for all 19,500 Ethereum NFTs in the collection was replaced with a black background with white text that reads: “This content has been restricted. Using Cloudflare's basic service in this manner is a violation of the Terms of Service. Please visit cfl.re/tos for more.”

That URL redirects to a Cloudflare terms page that states that a more basic Cloudflare plan does not allow clients to stream videos. “We limited your ability to use our services to deliver video bits from our network to your visitors. This is because every second of a typical video requires as much bandwidth as loading a full web page,” the page reads.

“Unfortunately, while most people respect these limitations and understand they exist to ensure high quality of service for all Cloudflare customers, some users attempt to misconfigure our service to stream video in violation of our Terms of Service,” the post continues.

The issue, then, appears to be due to the fact that the CloneX NFT data was not being hosted on an adequate Cloudflare plan. Others, like Yuga Labs blockchain lead 0xQuit, speculated that RTFKT may have forgotten to pay their Cloudflare bill and saw their service cancelled. 

Other RTFKT collections — like its NFTs with artist Fewocious, its Animus Eggs, and its Nike Dunk Cryptokicks — still had visible video art live as of Thursday at 10:30am ET white the CloneX art was gone.

The CloneX shakeup appears to have happened overnight, when several X users noticed the issue and flagged it on social media.

“And some of you thought this was the next @cryptopunksnfts since it was abandoned,” Ape Ventures founder Xeer wrote early Thursday morning. Unlike most NFT collections, CryptoPunks art is stored fully onchain on Ethereum.

Because NFTs can use art or visual data that’s hosted by a centralized company — like Cloudflare or AWS — they are inherently more mutable and censorable than decentralized data storage options. The tokens will still exist — but the art associated with it can vanish or be altered.

By 11:15 am ET on Thursday, however, some of the CloneX NFT art had reappeared, suggesting the issue with Cloudflare had been resolved (By 12:30pm ET, the art had reappeared).

So what happened? RTFKT Head of Tech Samuel Cardillo said the CloneX and Animus NFTs are moving to decentralized blockchain storage platform Arweave. Cardillo added that their Cloudflare plan will end at the end of April. The team had been trying to switch their storage infrastructure since December, but the switch took longer “because of internal corpo [sic] process.”

“Somehow this morning Cloudflare decided to move to the Free plan [a] few days before the end of the contract which also triggered that bug in which Cloudflare refuses to stream images and videos,” Cardillo said.

RTFKT shut down operations in December, spurring a slew of over 3,300 CloneX sales in one day as traders gave up hope on the future of the collection.

RTFKT’s post about its shutdown at the time didn’t offer much of an explanation. It instead claimed the shutdown was “a new chapter” for the company.

“RTFKT isn’t ending. It’s becoming what it was always meant to be — an artifact of cultural revolution,” the post read.

It’s a bitter end for those who lost money on the NFTs as well as those who had longer-term hopes for the December 2021 collection. The CloneX floor price hit an all-time low earlier this month, with NFTs selling for roughly $230 worth of ETH, per NFTPriceFloor data. 

In April 2022, RTFKT CloneX NFTs had a floor price of over $60,000 per NFT. Rarer CloneX NFTs have sold for prices as high as $1.25 million. 

Blockworks has reached out to Cloudflare for comment.

Discord CEO steps down

Discord’s CEO Jason Citron is stepping down and will be replaced by Humam Sakhnini, Citron announced in a post on Wednesday. Sakhnini will take the helm April 28.

Citron will still sit on Discord’s board of directors, and he will become an advisor to the new CEO going forward. Citron mentioned a hope that Discord will become a publicly traded company at some point in the future, and he says he’s leaving his role at a time when Discord is in a “position of strength.”

In an interview, Citron said there are “no specific plans” for a Discord IPO, but admitted that Sakhnini’s hiring is “a step in that direction.”

Sakhnini was previously the vice chair of Activision Blizzard, which is owned by Microsoft.

Abstract tipping controversy

The Abstract chain team faced some criticism on Wednesday after Abstract/Cube Labs’ head of the Asia-Pacific region shared a post claiming that “a streamer” using their livestreaming platform received a tip of 6.9 ETH, or roughly $11,700.

The “streamer” in question is Abril Zucchi, who works on developer relations at Cube Labs, the primary company developing the Abstract platform. Abstract currently limits who is allowed to livestream on the platform — prospective streamers have to apply and be accepted. Like Twitch, Abstract lets viewers tip streamers, but tippers can use crypto.

Some Crypto Twitter users speculated that the whole tipping incident may have been staged, while others argued that the post was misleading because it doesn’t mention Zucchi is a Cube Labs employee.

Cube Labs and Pudgy Penguins CEO Luca Netz then replied to the criticism: “Pretty insulting to my intelligence if you think we rigged it.”

• Another crypto card: Sui is launching a virtual Mastercard in a deal with xPortal and xMoney. You can spend SUI and access crypto features while also using the card for Apple Pay and Google Pay.