This week I learned about a new rug pull, this time for the WAX-based game Seafarmers. Trying to track down a timeline of events for this game has proven a difficult challenge, but I’ll do my best to present the events as I see them. Here is a timeline below:
- December 2021, Seafarmers joined Twitter
- January 2022, Whitepaper and Demo game release
- February 2022, verified on Neftyblocks and an Initial Sale
- Early March 2022, Game released
- Mid-March 2022, Rug pull
- May 2022, Project closed
Even for a blockchain project, this is an incredibly fast timeline of events. In a matter of fewer than 4 months, Seafarmers went from obscurity, to selling hundreds of thousands worth of NFTs, to a rug pull. The game was only live for two weeks before everything went bust. So, what happened?
Well with limited knowledge, it’s difficult to say. The main developers seemingly left the project mid-March and since then their Discord and website have been deleted. The spike and plummet in sales are staggering to look at.
With 7.68 Million $WAXP in sales and a 5% market fee, the developer team walked away with 384,000 WAX. Their initial sale, mentioned in the timeline above, was held on NeftyBlocks, where they sold over $130,000 USD in NFTs.
So the question is, did the developers have malicious intent? Did they set up a system to make a lot of money, then walk away purposely? And the answer is, yes, I think it appears so. I was shown a screenshot this week, apparently posted by a developer not involved in the rug pull.
First of all, the theatrical way they presented this announcement is disgusting. Get a backbone, cut the metaphors, and take responsibility. There is a lot to be angry about this. How does the developer team walk away with a few hundred thousand dollars and no accountability? How do they morally swindle people out of that much money? Some unlucky individual even spent 18,900 $WAXP on one NFT for this project, and I’d assume lost it all.
Before I wrap up, if you were affected by this you can check out ZOS’s (Zombie Outbreak Survival) tweet about how you can recoup some of your losses from Seafarmers. They are giving players an opportunity to blend their old, now worthless, assets into raffle tickets for ZOS prizes. Please do not buy any Seafarmer asset to join the raffle, as that only encourages bad actors, as well as takes away from those affected most.
So, how can you avoid investing in projects like this? Well even if you do all the right things, you can still find yourself in the unfortunate place of a rug pull, but there are things you can do to be careful.
One red flag here was their social media account. They had very few Twitter posts, as well as starting their Twitter account so close to game’s launch. This is usually something that you should be cautious about. Healthy games should have healthy social media accounts.
For a more full list of things to watch out for, you can check out this article I wrote a while back. As always, if you aren’t sure about a game, you can always ask in the Token Gamer Discord channel to see if the community has thoughts on it. Hopefully, these developers will be found, and held accountable for their actions, but until then this will be added to the list of rug pulls with no justice.
