In the crypto space, rugpulls are not so uncommon, we hear people investing in projects and get rugged. It can be of small amount or very large amount similar to the case of CryptoZoo which most of us have heard through the investigative journalism of Youtuber Coffeezilla. I have heard of stories of rugpulls of different projects in other chains and never thought i would be in a postion to write something on this until now. This is basically a recollection of the events thats happened towards Chifibots rugpull from the point of view of someone who has participated in their presale.
@nftstudios has posted the announcement of Presale of their game Chifibots. The game was going to be devloped in Aspire blockchain but the presale was done in HIVE since all the founders were OG's from Steem era. The below is a snippet from thier presale post.
At the time of Presale, team behind NFT studios was IJ Maha @steemcafe (Founder), Dave Christopher @daveonarrival (Co-Founder), Kevin Li @kevinli (Game Developer) and Florian @flauwy (Communications Director) along with their partners Michael Terpin(Aspire Cofounder) and Jim Blasko(Aspire Founder and CEO). I remember the team mentioning one of the main reason Aspire blockchain was preffered by the team because of low gas fees and the relationship with Michael Terpin and Jim Blasko.
Source - Page 186-187
i am providing some of their initial posts which was published outside. I have also attached a podcast in which Michael Terpin talking about NFT studios and Chifibots (Time stamp:06.51 - 07.50) and also mentioned on seed funding for the project.
https://www.edgeofnft.com/podcasts/crypto-nft-from-og-to-avant-garde-with-michael-terpin-of-transform-group-aspire-plus-space-jam-nft-twitter-nft-group-notables-partners-with-caa-uta-wme-more
https://innovationsoftheworld.com/nft-studios-chifibots-creating-a-universe-for-endless-fun/
@nftstudios/chifibots-pre-sale-a-play2earn-robot-trading-card-game-by-nft-studios
Chifibots secured a funding of more than 100K from HIVE presale, the three highest investors contributed to the presale with $50K, $10K and $6K. Chifibots had their first AMA introducing IJ as the Founder and CEO, Dave as COO, Kevin as Game Developer and Flauwy as a Content creator. Video of the meeting below.
A second funding was organized in Indiegogo which was kind of a fail and was only able to collect $2k from the $25000 goal.
@flauwy stepped down from his position a few months later and an announcement was made about him moving out of the project.
In the discord, Kevin was running the show and we didn't hear anything from other founders other than an occasional hello. one fine day we did get to the result of what the team had been working till now.
People did get a chance to try it out and as you would have seen in the video, it was an underwhelming experience and people did let Kevin know of what they thought and he mentioned the game had to start somewhere. The team was traveling a lot visiting different Blockchain Conventions and one fine day we did get this amazing video message from them.
Soon after we heard from the team that Aspire was not working out and they are looking for a new blockchain to develop. The community was not happy with this and did question the team on why Aspire did not work out and we got some response in the line of the Smart contracts were taking too much time to develop in Aspire and it would heavily delay the release of chifibots. Jim Blasko is the CEO of Aspire and we did hear about some funding from Aspire to develop the project in Chifibots AMA . When we look at the Indiegogo funding page, we can see an interesting comment from a user.
If we read between the lines, we can figure out what would have happened.
Community was really pushing the Team to develop in HIVE,but funding seemed to be the most important aspect the team was looking to. It really questions what happened to more than $100K funding which was procured during the HIVE Presale. When this was questioned, there was a standard response of how costly it is to make a game.
Chifibots team has applied for grants in different blockchain communities and finally Stacks was chosen as the blockchain where the game would be developed. They received a grant of $30K from Stacks.
Kevin left the team and the reason was mentioned as the work timing and an year of working on this without a salary. We do not know if this is the real reason. The only remaining team was IJ and Dave and they hired someone to work on the backend contracts for Stacks Marketplace.
Community finally hoped the game was on track and the team announced the Day one card packs and asked the presale participants for their stacks wallet. Then there was a lot of delay and finally people who purchased Day one cards got it in their card inventory. But what is the use of Cards if nothing else is developed. We again got communication from the team that the Stacks Grant Fund was also depleted and they have asked fund from another stacks accelerator program which would take time. They were also pitching to VCs for Funding which didn't really make sense when there was no development to show.
Discord became a graveyard and people who has invested was getting frustrated and started asking questions,there was complete radio silence from the team. @Spiritsurge offered to build a MVP for them which they could show to VCs to secure funding if required. Also if they are not planning to build, they were advised to share the IP and Spiritsurge would develop the game for the community. Even without having the conversation, they removed Spiritsurge from the discord but they didnt bother to communicate anything to the community. The discord was deleted a few days later and there by rugging investors of the money.
Highlight of this is even after getting a minimum funding of more than 130K, there was nothing to show. When we were discussing with the community and discussing with different people they worked with we could only account for the below expenses.
- Developer fee for backend for Market place - $8K
- Developer fee (Part time - 3K/month for 6 months) - $18K
- Travel expenses for blockchain conventions/others - $15K
- Art (Hive artist/Fiverr) - $5K (estimated)
- Payment to Team members - ??
with all these expenses accounted, it still covers only 35% of the 130K fund they received. We are unsure where the rest of the money went.
Primary analysis of the wallets show the team invested money in defi-projects like Polycub etc. This was done at the height of bull run, we can take a guess of what would have been the result.
If you are someone who put money into Chifibots like me, everything is not lost. There is a specific channel in Astral Revelations discord -https://discord.com/channels/992009256003965019/1102070487863001130 where you can talk with other investors and provides an opportunity to discuss on how to approach this situation as a community. @spiritsurge is building a TCG game for the community for who got rugpulled by Chifibots. He talked about the vision, showed some card designs and when the launch can be expected during the weekly Meeting in the PIMP discord last week. He has also onboared a new unity developer who will be working on the new TCG ( he was also an investor in chifibots). If you are some one who has lost money in this rugpull or interested in knowing more, join the Astral revelations discord link above.
Astral revelations team, who is working on the new TCG is 100% beneficiary of this post's payout. Please reblog and share.