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It’s a sad day for NFT meme-lovers as the popular NFT influencer sartoshi bids the NFT space a permanent “gn” with the end of sartoshi. Rather than provide reasoning behind the move, the anonymous figure instead laid out what the future of the mfers NFT collection will look like without them.
However, the NFT community is split on sartoshi’s last move – an open edition collection that has done 828.621 ETH (close to $1.5M currently) in sales at the time of writing. So was it a meme maker’s masterstroke, or just a clever rug pull done in plain sight?
For those unaware, sartoshi (@sartoshi_nft) was an anonymous NFT collector and meme artist. As many will notice, their pseudonym was a reference to the mythical creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto.
In recent months, sartoshi was best known as the creator of the mfers NFT project. From the get-go, the collection split the NFT space. While some loved it for its portrayal of the meme culture that is so central to NFTs, others decried it as an insult to hard-working, “real” artists who didn’t see nearly the success that mfers has.
To illustrate, these stick figure PFPs have a current floor price of 1.65 ETH on OpenSea. By the same token, the collection has amassed an astounding 38.7K ETH in secondary trade volume. That’s nearly $69 million (hehe) at today’s prices.
Earlier today, sartoshi announced their departure from the NFT space through a Tweet and accompanying blog post. Significantly, the post contains no real explanation as to why sartoshi has decided to leave now. Instead, it simply begins with a number of tweets from random Twitter users who predicted that sartoshi would indeed take inspiration from Satoshi Nakamoto by eventually disappearing from the space.
In the blog post, sartoshi outlines the steps that will be taking place to transfer ownership of the mfers smart contract to its community of holders. Basically, sartoshi is transferring ownership of the smart contract to the unofficial mfers multi-sig wallet.
To clarify, after mfers dropped in late 2021, a group of mfer holders created an unofficial mfers Discord, and a multi-sig gnosis safe to operate as an unofficial project treasury. Now, after staying away from the process to allow the community to dictate its direction, sartoshi is essentially giving those OG mfer holders control of the project.
In addition, sartoshi has made changes to the mfers royalty payments. To explain, there is a 5% royalty on every mfers NFT sale on the secondary market. The new royalty split goes as follows:
For the NFT community members who loved what mfers represented, the move from sartoshi was an act of genius. On one hand, it mimics the story of Satoshi Nakamoto. On the other, it also ensures that the life and future of mfers will exist separately from its creator.
Not everyone was so generous in their reactions, however. On the contrary, many folks on Twitter are saying that this marks the completion of sartoshi’s slow mfers rug pull. This comes despite the fact that the project arguably popularized the stance of meme NFT projects having no roadmap or utility whatsoever. Nevertheless, some people are big critics of sartoshi, as the above tweet from Hustler (himself a highly controversial influencer) shows.
What drew the most anger, however, was the decision to leave with the “end of sartoshi” drop. Open editions are controversial in a vacuum, let alone when it comes to a polarizing figure like sartoshi. So the fact that they dropped the collection right before leaving the space has rubbed many the wrong way. To say nothing of just how much the NFTs have already made.
So what do you think? Was this a true meme masterpiece, or just another serial rug puller taking advantage of the NFT space? No matter where you fall on the spectrum one thing is for sure: the legend of sartoshi will be remembered in the NFT space for quite some time.
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This article is educational material.
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Ola is a US-based writer and digital nomad. He loves thinking, learning, and writing about all things Web3, particularly its impact on major creative industries.
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