After 'Blockverse' Rug Pull Walks Away With $1.2 Million, Some Crypto Bros Are Asking For Centralized Oversight

On Tuesday, an NFT project called "Blockverse" went to public minting, meaning those interested could directly pay ETH to the developers for an NFT, and it's often the cheapest way one can get into an NFT project.

The project amassed a large following based on the premise of creating a game that would be built on top of Minecraft with a PvP-focus that allows people to use their NFTs to play and earn a currency called "$Diamond." The mint seemed to be going well, but to some, things were already starting to look odd.

100 eth traded within 1 hour of presale being open🎉

Probably nothing⚔️ pic.twitter.com/hpuMMy2A2u

— Blockverse (@Blockverse_NFT) January 23, 2022

SOLD OUT IN UNDER 8 MINUTES🎉⚔️!!!

we appreciate all of you for supporting us and our community and cannot wait to start building⚡️

Official Opensea link: https://t.co/7mJGB00iBD pic.twitter.com/klcMnl66Gh

— Blockverse (@Blockverse_NFT) January 24, 2022

I've bought 18 @Blockverse_NFT tonight on OS/LR. Stake for p2e in Minecraft and earn $DIAMOND. Bullish on this one; trying to get to 25. Hard to buy right now with sales flying and scammers changing prices, but I'll get there.

— Fastrabbit.eth (@FastrabbitEth) January 24, 2022

lmao lost 0.6 gas trying to mint blockverse fml pic.twitter.com/puV2gUjqmT

— Flur 🤫 | NFTs NFTs NFTs Memes Memes Memes (@flurnft) January 24, 2022

After a project mints, the question soon becomes, "What's next?" And although the answer was supposed to be the creation of a game that allows you to earn a crypto token to use on in-game items, in reality, what happened was that the project deleted their Discord and Minecraft servers before withdrawing all 500 Ether from the mint wallet, effectively pulling the rug out from everyone in the community and ruining their week.

This rug is just the latest in a long series of NFT projects that either have support pulled or outright die from lack of community, leading some in the crypto space to ask for regulation and a centralized database of NFT projects and their doxxed creators for accountability — which may be on the horizon.

Ouchies, @Blockverse_NFT rugged, here's the wallet that took the 500e from contract 12 hours ago.#Minecraft server down,
Discord deleted,
Website nonfunctionalhttps://t.co/4HczoKF26X

— Green2Cleanᵍᵐ | Citizen #154 🦁 (@Green2CIean) January 25, 2022

Well fuck @Blockverse_NFT This ended well indeed https://t.co/PBG96422Z8 pic.twitter.com/8VJoMICZcb

— Hodl (@HewCrypto) January 25, 2022

Can we gather as a community to stop projects like these from happening? @Blockverse_NFT goes offline via discord, website. Its not like we cant trace back the owners but when is enough enough? #NFTCommunity #nft #nfts #rugpull

— k1ng (@k1ngxgn1k) January 25, 2022

Just heard about the @Blockverse_NFT rug. The project sold out yesterday in less than 8 minutes (500 ETH) and had 792 ETH in secondary sales. Discord & website closed and the anon devs are gone. Do we need a federated entity that approves all NFT projects and its doxxed founders?

— NFT Ethics (@NFTethics) January 25, 2022

It's also worth noting in this that several Bored Ape owners had heavily invested before the rug pull, giving them essentially nothing but heavy losses to walk away with.