NFT Startup Recur Backed by Billionaire Ready to Wind up

Recur, an NFT startup is going to shut down less than three years of its existence. Although it is backed by billionaire Steve Cohen and has partnerships with popular brands like Hello Kitty, the platform decided to shut down in every respect.

Many famous NFT platforms have shut shop in the past number of months due to the flattening NFT market and one of the important reasons cited is the unpredictability of the market which forced them to challenge which are unknown. The ‘unknown challenges’ make it difficult to provide the level of services and dedication that the company decided to provide.

About Recur NFT Platform

The objective of the platform was promising. The NFT startup was once valued at $333 Million after a $50 Million infusion from Cohen’s investment fund ‘DIGITAL’ in 2021. The platform will eliminate its site functions till November 16. After that, it will go offline.

Recur serves other companies with Web3 features such as brand-specific NFTs, loyalty programs, membership incentives, and game assets. The platform offered the feature of royalty for artists and creators to gain profit from the recurring sales of their digital work.

Royalty is a way to support artists but secondary marketplaces like OpenSea have announced to shift their plan from enforcing the royalty to implementing the optional model. Irrespective of the decisions made, Recur continues its support for royalty features on the platform.

However, big partners like Hello Kitty couldn’t save the company. It has distinguishably reached its peak with nearly 400,000 minted NFTs, and partnering with big brands like Sanrio and Emoji, Recur could not survive the volatility in the NFT market.

It is not the only platform to shut down due to recent market conditions. Another NFT platform – Nifty also shutted in May. Similar reasons pushed Tessera to leave the industry.

Recur also faced a class action lawsuit at the beginning of the year. The company had executed the layoffs in 2022. It had lessened its workforce from 300 employees to less than 100. As per the lawsuit the platform has violated the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act by not providing a 60-day notice of mass layoffs.

Users of Recur had time till August 31 to withdraw their NFTs and cash out balances from their wallets. The site will stop the primary and secondary sales by then. The remaining NFT and their metadata will be moved out of the platform to the InterPlanetary File System. This is the decentralized storage space that keeps the collectibles accessible without Recur.