04/10/2021 Solana NFT project delivers emojis instead of promised artwork

Solana NFT enthusiasts have been left gobsmacked after a supposed 17-year-old digital artist allegedly took 1,000 SOL in a fake NFT project.

The artist was accused of what’s known as a ‘rug pull’ in the crypto community. A ‘rug pull’ is when a project fails to deliver, and absconds with all invested funds.

Iconics had promised to produce 8,000 NFTs in the form of randomised 3D artworks of busts with a range of attributes. The project was due to launch on September 30, with 2,000 NFTs available for 0.5 SOL to those who had early access via a presale.

The 2,000 presale NFTs sold out quickly, and users waited eagerly for the reveal to see what they minted. Instead, minters who got early access through the presale received an NFT featuring 20 random emojis and quickly took to Twitter to express their frustration at apparently being duped.

Emoji NFT
Emoji NFT

Twitter user @adhcrypto took to Twitter to share an image of his costly emoji-based artwork

A user called ‘FreeCartel’ noted that the creators of the project were a father and son duo and that “ICONICS had all of the right signs of a good project“, further compounding the frustration felt by the community.

FreeCartel also listed a number of points that indicated theproject was possible a scam, including using an “on.fleek” domain to mint the NFTs, no community management and the use ofauto-approved transactions.

To add insult to injury, the creators had also said they reveal their identities after the minting process in a Discord faq.

Popular Solana NFT accountSOLBigBrainalso got caught up in the scandal, saying “Damn.. @IconicsSol just RUGGED. Did a presale for 2K at .5 and made off with I think 1000 SOL”.

“Sorry to anybody who took the L here. I minted a bunch also as art looked good. Lesson Learned,” they added.

Following the botched minting, the Discord chat channel was disabled, no further announcements have been made and its Twitter account deleted.

However, the Solana NFT community has since rallied and an array of projects have taken to Twitter to offer airdrops, 50% minting discounts and one-for-one swaps for those unfortunate enough to own a now dubiously iconic piece of Solana NFT history.

Arts

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/solana-nft-project-delivers-emojis-184340464.html

Interesting NFTs
Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?
"Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?" is dedicated to the mysterious creation of Bitcoin, and acts as the showcase artwork within Javier ArrĂ©s’ exploratory series "Bitcoin, The Origin". "Who is the creator of Bitcoin?" The artist, ArrĂ©s, explores this question, and the feelings of doubt and mystery that accompany it, through his unique artistic language. An unknown, an enigma. It should be remembered that the name Satoshi Nakamoto is a pseudonym of Bitcoin's author or authors and gives us little insight into its true creator. For this Visual Toy, ArrĂ©s uses the signature claw machine, his famous half-operation, to symbolize our collective ignorance and unconfirmed belief: As soon as it has the stuffed animal within its grasp and appears to have solved the puzzle, the animal escapes again, and again. At present, there are three more public and studied possibilities who are either believed to be the creators of the currency or who directly claim the creation of it. It may be all or none of them, yet these three personalities leave us clues which are an important part of this interesting enigma. For this moment, it will remain unknown... In this artwork, ArrĂ©s elevates the claw machine from the apparatus, to an iconic pop art object serving as an important element to the Bitcoin creation narrative. Action is everywhere, with each movement serving an iconographical or metaphorical purpose related directly to cryptocurrency: Various ups and downs, roller coasters, mining points, robot, coins and more speak to a sense of hope, risk, mystery, randomness and possibility of pay out. Hundreds of manically thought out details make this creation one of the artist’s most complex Visual Toys to date. ------- "Bitcoin, The Origin" is a set of two Visual Toys, titled "Who is Satoshi Nakamoto" and "It’s Alive!" which reflect and explore the mystery and enigmas behind the creation of Bitcoin. ArrĂ©s presents these proposals to us in his signature style, full of iconography, fantasy, maniacal animations and a panoply of details (both subtle and overt) which simultaneously fascinate, hypnotize, and narrate this historical milestone through the singular vision of the artist. Through this series, ArrĂ©s freezes a crucial moment of cryptocurrency history, taking a still photo under his vision and turning it into two unique crypto artworks. ---- More info about Javier ArrĂ©s: https://javierarres.com/about.html
The Scion
A young figure caught in a moment of distraction, aware only ephemerally of his unconscious being, as it engages in psychological and psychedelic layer spaces. His right arm casually cradles a moray eel; the figure is comfortable but not truly aware of the potentials for danger in such negligence. His shirt reads “Bello” in Pokemon style font, harkening back to a childhood straddling the millennial threshold. To his right side, out of the unconscious deep, shrouded alien heads propagate as a fractal totem, each new iteration a more sophisticated rendering of emotional masking over the cold mystery of the greys. As the scion of the Budgie-Sattva, the young man, in his distraction, is also simultaneously aware of higher levels of self discovery. To his left a psychological topology sets beneath the oracle side of an 8 ball ,hovering; its message a purest concept of acceptance. The “Scion” lettering is in 80’s HeMan style bold declaration. The lower right side of the painting is like a hybrid of melon, feathers, and seeds. The crystals in the background bring light; conducted, refracted, reflected, and dispersed, to balance the dark shadow of the figure’s physical body. The aura of the scion succeeds in layers to point, with a finger, and the crown chakra, toward a center of a mandala existing as nigh pure application of strokes, in essence painterly abstraction, but also revealing hints of the Aura of migraine, and the bi-hemispherical nature of the brain–noting concerns of the possibility of inherited mental disease. Yet the flourish of chakra as it sets against that center is robust, active, coherent, and reveling against all fear. Fundamentally, the piece speaks to the activation of one’s potential to begin to “Know Thyself”, and find greater awareness out of the enigmas of the mind–as an inculcated seed given to the rich soil of one’s own birthright.
Super Red Moon and Red Azadi Tower
What a coincidence! A Supermoon is a full moon at the closest distance from Earth in its elliptic orbit—resulting in a slightly larger-than-usual apparent size. I was lucky to capture it in 2016 when the Azadi Tower (Tower of Freedom, one of the Iranian modern symbols) was red as a coincidence. 75% of the sale goes to The Association of Families of Flight PS752 Victims.
Block Chain Dungeon
Once upon a time... a little boy named Leo loved to paint, draw and experiment. He also loved to play with blocks and chains, which drew him again and again into the rooms of his friends Michel and Angelo. Often they also met in virtual rooms of Cryptovoxels, Decentraland, Somnium Space or Sandbox to create new inventions, read books about new technologies, or just swing the brushes. But on this day something gigantic happened. A good friend of Leo came to visit and brought his girlfriend Mona, who wanted a piece of Leo's art on her skin. This was the birth of the NFT's, as Leo developed Non Fungible Tattoos in the Block Chain Dungeon of Michel and Angelo. From that day on people from all over the world came to get NFT's from Leo or one of his students, like "Skeenee the rat", who controls the NFT machine with his laptop. A new age began.
BTC POWER
BTC POWER