Nike’s Million-Dollar Web3 Fiasco: When Sneakers Go Digital… And Vanish

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Imagine, if you will, a corporate titan striding boldly into the glittering realm of digital fancies, only to trip disastrously over its own laces. Such is the spectacle unfolding as Nike finds itself beleaguered by an eager cadre of investors—inconsolable at the collapse of its dashing Web3 offspring, RTFKT, acquired in 2021 with dreams as lofty as their NFTs were volatile.

These unfortunate souls assert that the swift demise of Nike-branded NFTs has left their pockets considerably lighter, their dreams of pixelated profits dashed upon the jagged rocks of corporate whimsy.

Nike’s Charming Charade: Peddling “Unregistered Securities” in Sneakers?

The court papers allege that Nike executed a spectacular “rugpull” worthy of Broadway acclaim, shutting down RTFKT and leaving the digital sneakerheads clutching at thin air. Our plaintiffs paint a picture of Nike wielding its marketing prowess like a magician’s wand—promising fortunes only to vanish with a theatrical flourish.

This NFT project made $168M

Nike bought it

Elon Musk and Kanye West wore their shoes

Now the collection is gone
And so are the founders

The rise, fall, rug of RTFKT and Clone-X

(1/9)

— StarPlatinum (@StarPlatinumSOL) April 24, 2025

In essence, Nike rode the crypto wave like a starry-eyed surfer, coaxing investors with promises of digital glory and exclusive riches. Yet, as the tide receded and RTFKT folded, those dreams shriveled like forgotten gym socks.

Once ensnared by whispers of quests, limited editions, and the tantalizing prospect of resale profits, hapless buyers found themselves with little more than worthless specimens of what might once have been ‘cool.’

“Because The Nike NFTs derived their value from the success of a given promoter and project – here, Nike and its marketing efforts – investors purchased this digital asset with the hope that its value would increase in the future as the project grows in popularity based on the Nike brand,”
the lawsuit lamented.

The doling out of promises was as generous as a department store sale, yet once RTFKT’s lights flickered off, so too vanished hope and the shiny allure of those pixelated trainers.

Our plaintiffs are quite insistent that these NFTs qualify as securities—unregistered, untamed beasts that Nike conveniently failed to leash with the SEC’s formalities. Had our investors been made privy to this, how quickly might their wallets have snapped shut.

“Plaintiff and others would never have purchased the Nike NFTs at the prices they did, or at all, had they known that the Nike NFTs were unregistered securities or that Nike would cause the rug to be pulled out from under them,” they asserted, no doubt over a warm cup of regret.

They seek the company’s penance in the form of a jury trial and damages surpassing a modest $5 million, citing consumer protection laws from coast to coast, because nothing says “accountability” quite like a plaintive legal scroll.

Technical Difficulties: Even the Images Won’t Cooperate

As if the legal tempest weren’t enough, on April 24th, NFTs affiliated with Nike suffered an existential crisis of their own—images refusing to display, caught in some digital purgatory.

Samuel Cardillo, RTFKT’s technological helmsman, revealed the trouble was due to an errant Cloudflare contract deciding to expire early. Truly, not even the digital world is immune to the bureaucratic equivalent of forgetting to pay the electric bill.

“Beginning of April, the decision to stay on Cloudflare Free was (finally) approved and I started the work to move the infrastructure. Somehow this morning Cloudflare decided to move to the Free plan few days before the end of the contract which also triggered that bug in which Cloudflare refuses to stream images and videos,” Cardillo explained, in tones as weary as a man explaining why his cat ate the homework.

Now, hoping to prevent future bouts of digital impotence, Cardillo is endeavoring to relocate RTFKT’s NFTs to Arweave’s decentralized fortress, riding on AR Drive—because if you must stumble, stumbling on decentralized, blockchain-backed storage is at least stylishly modern.

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2025-04-27 15:02