Nifty News: Solana NFT trading volume, Nike RTFKT COO hacked, and more

DNP3, a streamer and founder of several crypto projects like The charity-focused crypto CluCoin, The Goobers NFT and the metaverse platform Gridcraft Network has admitted to losing investor funds through gambling. 

In a tweet, the nonfungible token (NFT) project founder talked about his gambling addiction and issued a public apology.

— DNP3 (@DNPthree) January 3, 2023

The Twitch streamer said that he got “incredibly addicted” to gambling in the last year. Eventually, the Twitch streamer claimed that he lost everything. He wrote: 

“In addition to my own life savings, I also irresponsibly used investor funds to try and get my money back from the casino which was wrong for so many reasons.”

The streamer added that he is now financially and spiritually broke. He also highlighted that his sense of trust in himself is compromised. “I’m working with a help group to start the path to recovery,” he added.

Nike’s RTFKT COO loses NFTs to hack

Nikhil Gopalani, the chief operating officer of the NFT project RTFKT, went on Twitter to say that his NFT collection was stolen in a phishing attack. Gopalani described the attacker as a “clever phisher” and said that the scammer sold his Clone X NFTs.

Hey Clone X community – I was hacked by a clever Phisher (same phone # as apple ID) & sold all my clone x / some other nfts… Obviously pretty upset and hurt by this and I havent really been able to move all day. Hope people who bought my clones love them (being positive)

— Nikhil Gopalani (@Nikgopalani) January 3, 2023

OpenSea data shows that the attacker used two wallets to steal Gopalani’s NFTs, which are worth around $173,000. This includes 19 CloneX NFTs, 18 RTFKT Space Pods, 17 Loot Pods and 11 CryptoKicks. Data from Etherscan also shows that only $0.11 in Ether (ETH) remains in the wallet linked to Gopalani. 

While the method of phishing is not yet revealed, a tweet from RTFKT CTO Samuel Cardillo suggests that Gopalani may have provided access codes to some scammers.

Gamers bully NFTs out of mainstream games

The internet’s anti-NFT narrative seems to have successfully separated mainstream game development companies from NFTs. Throughout 2022, game developers like Stalker studio GSC Game World, Ubisoft and Worms developer Team17 backpedaled on their intent to integrate NFTs within games due to negative feedback from the gaming community.

After executing NFT integration through its Quartz project, game developer Ubisoft took a step back on NFTs. The u-turn came after the gaming company received negative feedback online on Quartz in 2021.

This remains the stupidest and most pointless thing in the god damn world.

If anyone would like to stop working for companies that do dumb things like this, we’re hiring and will be hiring even more in the new year. Esp if you’re in , for real, hit us up. https://t.co/Hb2Fq5xZ55

— Nels Anderson (@Nelsormensch) December 7, 2021

Amid the pushback, many still believe that NFTs and games can intertwine. On Nov. 4, Electronic Arts (EA) CEO Andrew Wilson spoke at an earnings call and highlighted that NFTs and play-to-earn are the future of gaming. However, the EA CEO also noted that it’s still early to see how it would work. 

Apart from EA, Final Fantasy creator Square Enix has also been a supporter of integrating NFTs and blockchain into gaming. The company recently invested in an NFT gaming company.

Solana NFT trade volume show signs of strength

After being dealt a massive loss with the Solana (SOL) token losing above 90% of its value in 2021, NFT trading volumes within the Solana blockchain are showing signs of strength, with Christmas day having the most activities.

According to NFT data tracker CryptoSlam, Solana had above $80 million in NFT sales in the last 30 days. The blockchain had over 800,000 transactions in that timespan, surpassing Polygon and ImmutableX.

Despite its great month, it’s uncertain if the strength shown will continue as most of the volume came from DeGods and y00ts, which are both bridging into Polygon and Ethereum to pursue further adoption.