Coinbase-supported Instagram copycat Zora has frustrated users with a number of controversial decisions that appear to completely go against its previous stances on several of its offerings.
First, with little warning, it terminated years of its support for NFTs (ERC-721s) for creators in favor of ERC-20-like memecoins.
Second, as a way to underhandedly hand out money to disgruntled users, it announced an airdrop. However, it withheld all governance rights and granted itself a 45% allocation for team and strategic contributors plus 25% to the project-controlled treasury and liquidity pools.
Crypto sleuth ZachXBT summed up the feelings of many members, saying, “Why does the token need to exist at all if it serves absolutely zero purpose?” Zach also called it “just embarrassing for the space.”
Read more: What’s the deal with Zora, Base, and content coins?
The NFT-based social media platform abandons NFTs
Zora pivoted to turning social media posts into tradable coins with no warning, a frustrating move, particularly for artists who had used the platform to mint NFTs since 2021 but suddenly found themselves minting ERC-20-based “creator coins” instead.
When a Zora user posts to the social platform, the Coinbase Base-supported project generates a new token with a supply of 1 billion, some of which goes to the post’s creator. The creator also earns 1% of the trading fees from its UniSwap listing.
Zora and Base touted so-called content coins as an easy way for creators to earn money from their posts. Of course, in practice, the surprise launch disproportionately benefited early insiders and key opinion leader accounts like Base itself.
‘Base is for everyone’… And is 74% below its high
Base, the Ethereum-based layer 2 blockchain founded by Coinbase, launched a content coin that initially seemed to be the first token launch by the massive project. In less than two hours, confused traders bid up the BASEISFOREVERYONE token to a market capitalization of $15 million.
As the community realized it wasn’t actually an official Base token, it crashed 94% in seven minutes.
As of publication time, the price of BASEISFOREVERYONE remains 74% below its all-time high.
The Zora ‘airdrop just for fun’
ZachXBT described content coins as a good way to convince larger creators to stop using Zora’s platform.
The airdrop of ZORA tokens, which are entirely distinct from BASEISFOREVERYONE, will also give tokenholders zero governance rights. Normally, airdrop and proprietary tokens give users at least some sort of voting rights in a project.
“ZORA is for fun only,” its legal team disclaimed, “and does not entitle its holders to any governance rights or a claim on any equity ownership in Zora or its products.”
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Source: https://protos.com/zora-abandons-nfts-without-warning-launches-airdrop-with-zero-rights/