A Notable Delisting

Last night, "Pepe's Chair," part of Vincent Van Dough's (VVD) Notable Pepes collection, was delisted from OpenSea.

❗ Why It Matters

The NFT, which was previously trading for multiple ETH, appears to have been the subject of a DMCA take down notice issued yesterday.

🔍 Need to Know

The Notable Pepes collection features art from various different artists, the artist of the Pepe Chair NFT is Dangiuz.This is not Dangiuz's first "Chair" controversy. Last year, Dangiuz planned to release a "The Chair" collection on Nifty Gateway, which "consisted of 999 steampunk style chairs." There were some similarities between Dangiuz's art for this collection and the work of another artist named Valentin Winkelmann. Eventually, word of the drop spread to Winkelmann, and the collection was postponed. In April of 2022, Winkelmann put his version of The Chair up for auction on SuperRare, where the piece was sold for 11 ETH.

Fast forwarding to yesterday, Winkelmann and Dangiuz are once again at odds over "The Chair." Valentin came forward overnight as the person who filed the DMCA complaint, stating that he thought Dangiuz "might have learned something" during the last run-in. Valentin said that Vincent Van Dough and Dangiuz were blackmailing him during the Notable Pepe drop and claimed that "all they are looking for are other's peoples' backs on which they can make money."

🕳️Go Deeper

This is not the first time a Vincent Van Dough project has come under scrutiny. In November of 2021, VVD released "Right Click Save This," a compilation of popular art taken from the furries community. The art for this piece featured a Pepe frog with the caption, "LAWSUIT MATERIAL. CALL: 1800-SUE-ME." Despite DMCA threats from the original artists, this piece was put up for auction, eventually selling for 20.35 ETH.

In a separate instance, VVD responded to a tweet from Kevin Rose about removing NFT collections that used the "Moonbirds" name by releasing his own collection, also called "Moonbirds." This collection, now called "Moonbird art collection" had been previously delisted by OpenSea, but has since been re-listed.

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