Good day everyone,

I hope you are all well and having a great day, welcome to CryptoGod-1's blog on all things crypto. Following a previous post I made regarding Coffeezilla: Cracking Down on Crypto Fraud, I am following that up with the recent announcement by Logan Paul that he intends to refund his community from CryptoZoo with $1.3M, and also apologised for his behaviour and actions.

CoffeeZilla & Logan Paul - Recap

While I covered a lot of this in my previous post, just as a recap for those who are not aware:

• In December 2022 YouTuber Coffeezilla uploaded a three-part investigation series regarding the crypto project Logan Paul was involved in, known as CryptoZoo.
• Logan Paul fired back, threatening legal action against CoffeeZilla for his claims that Logan Paul had been involved in a scam and fraud.
• In his Podcast Logan Paul confirmed his intentions to sue CoffeeZilla.
• Days Later Logan Paul apologised and withdrew his threats, revealing he would take accountability and even apologised to CoffeeZilla.
• On the 13th of January 2023, Logan Paul released a video apologising for the project and promising a rewards program.

Apology and a Three Step Plan

The news was first brought to my attention on Twitter, where I saw @WhaleChart make a post about Logan Paul apologising and his $1.3M refund program. I was quite surprised to see this post, as the last thing I expected was such a level of refunding towards the community.

However, further investigation revealed the finer details regarding the refunding program. In a video released by Logan Paul, he goes into the details of his three step refund plan, along with an apology. This was  announced on the 13th of January 2023 and can be seen in the Tweet below.

Within the video Logan start off by acknowledging he was defensive towards CoffeeZilla, but apologised to him and makes sure to let it be known he is definitely not going ahead with his previous threats of a lawsuit.

“Coffeezilla is not a criminal, I called him. I apologized. My initial response to his series was that of fire, ego, and pride. I was defensive because I know I never scammed anyone with this project. The fact is, suing Coffeezilla is not going to help Cryptozoo holders so I need to focus my attention there.”

From there, the video move into his three step plan of action going forward. 

The first step involves Logan and his manager Jeff burning all of their Zoo Tokens so that they have no further financial gain to be made from the project.

This is a good move from Logan, as from the off it shows he is not looking to rug pull any further, and from my understanding, both Logan and Jeff had never touched their bags of Zoo Tokens. It was other members of the original team who had done so with their holdings, therefore the amount held by both Logan and Jeff should be quite substantial. This should make a significant dent in the overall remaining supply, meaning the underlying value of those who do hold any tokens should theoretically increase due to supply and demand mechanics. That is the idea at least, although if there is little to no demand then the supply will not have much impact.

“Me and Jeff are going to burn our tokens so we have no financial upside to the game, and it will add value to older tokens."

Step two involves creating a rewards program for any players who are disappointed in the way the game has gone. Players will be able to burn any eggs or animals which they own and in return they will receive a refund of the mint price, which stands at 0.1 ETH or the equivalent value in BNB. This is higher than the current value of them within the game, basically meaning players will be able to get their original investment back. Logan also states that he is personally pledging 1,000 ETH to this fund, which according to him is about 1.3 million dollars, in fact it is over 1.5 million going on how the value of ETH has increased recently.

 “Step two, we want to offer a rewards program for players who are disappointed with the status of the game.”

The third step involves a plan to complete the CryptoZoo game as originally planned, which will look to complete and refine all the major issues that have been brought up regarding the game. Most of these revolve around the functionality of the eggs within the game, although they will also be looking at completing the marketplace and to ability to improve the yield from the game. All of this was promised in the whitepaper prior to the launch of the game.

"Step three, obviously finish and deliever the game as outlined in the whitepaper by completing the egg bridge from ETH to BSC for base animals and base eggs, completing the marketplace, and obviously completing your releasing the animals into the wild to improve your yield function."

Logan goes on to state his utmost apologies to the community for what has happened, and for how the entire situation was handled. He also goes on to mention the "full internal investigation" which is required to find out exactly who is responsible and why this happened, and lay the blame upon those who are accountable. 

“To say I am disappointed with how this was handled internally is an understatement,” he added. “There’s a full internal investigation going on along with an audit and we’re going to pursue full legal action for whoever needs to be held accountable. I’m sorry guys, I apologize for how this has unfolded thus far, and I want people to know that they can trust me and that I’ll always take care of the fans…I promise to be transparent and disclose anything that happens in the process.”

Media & Community Response

Some will claim it is due to the excellent work of CoffeeZilla, and I would agree with that. However, there is more to it than that. From what CoffeeZilla did in his three videos and the attention it brought, mainstream media began to look at this story. Many prominent sites have published the story in the recent weeks, including WatcherGuru, TechCrunch, and even YahooNews.

In the video below YouTuber Scott Shafer describes his opinion on the apology video, in which he outlines how he does not believe what Logan has to say. He believes the original video, where Logan Paul threatened CoffeeZilla, was the real thing Logan Paul wanted to say and do. However, upon advice from his legal team, likely Logan was advised to apologise and back down immediately. He breaks down the three step plan, and basically believes it is all about preventing Logan Paul getting sued, getting investigated, or even going to jail. He believes that Logan Paul could still face those things, and this is just about Logan Paul getting ahead of it and doing damage control.

He is impressed with the second step of the plan in terms of users getting refunded, but again points out the fact that for the best part of a year Logan Paul had ignored this project and that it was only once CoffeeZilla got involved that this step in the right direction happened. He also points out how the 1,000 ETH is likely not enough to cover all the investors who originally bought into CryptoZoo, but it is better than being left with nothing.

In terms of the third point about completing the game, Scott Shafer brings up an excellent point regarding how easy it can be to complete this type of game. He points out the video below, where a developer created a real working version of the CryptoZoo game which Logan Paul and his team had promised. It was created with a fraction of the resources and completed the game in a matter of hours / days. Between this creator and his friend they also made artwork for the game through the use of AI. Voilà, in a matter of days the entire basis of what CryptoZoo should have been was created, as you can see in the video below. If you would like to try it out, the game can be found here: https://realzoo.itsyipy.com/ 

A user on Twitter who defended Logan Paul used what I could only call a poor excuse in doing so. He defended Logan Paul in his actions due to the "difficulty of running a business and managing a team." This is a difficult line to accept, as anyone who has run a business understands that if you do not deliver on your product you should be held accountable. He was duly put in his place and told where to go with it, although as you can see the community is appreciative that Logan Paul is at least trying to fix things.

Some however took it a bit further with their interpretation of the video, stating that Logan Paul had restored his reputation by doing this apology. The signing off with the word "Powerful" in the Tweet below is a bit much, as words mean little until actions are taken. Some people will always be fans / followers and take an apology at word, while others will remain sceptical. I believe the latter is the better approach, especially considering it is not the first crypto project which Logan Paul has been associated with that tanked.

While I commend the three step plan as it seems genuine, albeit somewhat forced in an attempt to retain his status as an influencer, I feel the final part of the video is purely based on retaining his reputation and is tough to believe. Especially his appreciation and thanks to CoffeeZilla. Clearly Logan did not expect the backlash he received from all of this, and likely he lost some fans along the way, but he has at least made steps to move in the right direction. His legal team directed him to do this, there is no doubt about it, but it is a good move in the crypto space to see those who got scammed seeing their money (somewhat) returned. I would not be rushing out to invest in any of his further projects though, as the trust should not be there for anybody when it comes to believing an influencer when it comes to financial advice. However, he should at least get some credit for doing the right thing and making real moves towards rectifying his mistakes.

Have a great day.

Peace. CryptoGod-1.

** This article was first publish on Medium on the 14th of January 2023, and it can be found here https://medium.com/@1r3n9project/logan-paul-reveals-1-3m-refund-program-for-cryptozoo-investors-f389bbbc494e **

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