Creator Platform Shuttering NFTs

Rally, a social token platform, will begin sunsetting its Ethereum sidechain today and all its NFTs will be inaccessible, according to an email sent out to the Rally community today. A copy of the email is available on Reddit and the news of Rally shutting down was first broken by Decrypt.

🧐 Wait, What?

Rally.io is an Ethereum-based platform for creators, like social media personalities, bands, esports teams, etc. It launched social tokens to allow those creators to engage with and monetize their communities.

But now, citing macro headwinds and a challenging environment, Rally has relayed that it will no longer be able to support its Ethereum sidechain. As a result, "since NFTs on the Rally sidechain are not transferable to mainnet, these will not be accessible once the site shuts down."

Rally also shuttered its linked Twitter account, failing to make a public statement through the popular web3 medium. 

❗ Why It Matters

The news was sudden, and Rally only informed users on their platform of the news the same day that it was being abandoned. Inadequate communication is an unfortunate hallmark of many NFT projects, and frequency and clarity of communication (across the board from all projects) is something that simply must be improved upon in web3.

Similar to Stephen Curry's "2974 Collection" on Solana that was lost during the FTX collapse in November, this represents another cautionary tale of how users may not actually have ownership over their NFTs if they are housed in a centralized manner.

🎤 Community Quotes

📊 By the Numbers

Per CoinMarketCap, the RLY token peaked above $1.30 at the end of Mar. 2021 but has been trading around $0.01 since Nov. 2022.