Friendsies, an Ethereum NFT project from long-running art duo FriendsWithYou, announced today that it would “pause” all future plans around the project after raising more than $5 million worth of ETH in last year’s mint. The team then apparently deleted their Twitter account shortly afterwards, leading to accusations of a “rug pull.”
Now, some members of the community are proposing a plan to take over and continue running the project.
“As the project founders, we have decided that it would be best to put a pause on [Friendsies] and all future digital goods for the time being,” the since-deleted tweet thread read.
FriendsWithYou, a collaboration between artists Samuel Borkson and Arturo Sandoval III, started in 2002 and has exhibited in many museums and galleries around the world. The project has also released toys and collaborated on a Netflix cartoon series. FriendsWithYou’s official website is also apparently down, as of this writing, although the Friendsies’ website is live.
With the $5.3m @friendsies_ai hard rug earlier today it remains unclear how the funds could’ve possibly been spent.
There have been no announcements since September, no community treasury, and no P2E game.
The team blames “market volatility” as their rationale. pic.twitter.com/FM8ytum4Ur
— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) February 21, 2023
Friendsies was launched last April via a Dutch auction mint that started at 3.33 ETH, or around $11,450 on the date of the mint. The price steadily declined over the course of the mint process for the 10,000 NFTs, but the mint ultimately generated $5.3 million worth of ETH, according to pseudonymous on-chain sleuth ZachXBT. It’s unclear if the funds were used, and if so, how.
Each original Friendsies avatar, which featured the duo’s colorful cartoonish style, served as
