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Investors of a Solana-based NFT project were said to have been dumbfounded when a teenager allegedly ran away with 1,000 SOL, the token in Solana that is being used to pay for transactions.
Solana is one of the leasing decentralized computing platforms in the world of blockchain. It was reported that a 17-year-old digital artist took 1,000 SOL in a fake NFT project.
Coin Rivet reported via Yahoo Finance that Iconics made a promise to make 8,000 non-fungible tokens in the form of 3D artworks of busts with varying attributes. This project was supposed to be launched on Sept. 30 and it will offer 2,000 NFTs for 0.5 SOL for fans who will join the pre-sale.
The pre-sale of 2,000 NFTs got sold out quickly and this made users or investors anticipate what kind of artworks have been minted. However, they were flabbergasted after receiving 20 random emojis which is far from the kind of artwork that they were anticipating.
It became clear that they were duped and the artist was accused of a thing that the crypto community called the “rug pull.” This is said to be an act where a project was never delivered and the invested funds also disappear.
After the fake minting project was revealed, it was said that the Discord chat channel related to the project was disabled. At this time, there is no announcement about the release of the promised artwork and Iconics’ Twitter account was also said to have been deleted.
The project was the brainchild of an unidentified 17-years-old 3D digital artist, who failed to deliver on his promise and disappeared with investor’s funds.
Crypto Slate reported that the creator was able to produce 14 samples of work on Discord so no one suspected it could be a fraud. It was added that information collected from Blockchain data showed that the fraudster escaped with 1,000 units of Solana tokens. The current price of SOL is said to be $138,000 and the funds have been disseminated across different accounts.
Finally, the victims of the NFT fraud have come together and created their own Discord channel to discuss about their losses. It was said that they are also trying to continue the botched NFT project to at least get back what they have invested.
