Hello everyone,

I hope you all are having a nice day, welcome to CryptoGod-1's blog on all things Crypto. In this post I will be looking at a recent NFT scam which has been caught and removed from Opensea. Basically the artwork was a copy and ripoff of an original project and the original team were successful in getting this fraudulent work removed. Its common sight in the NFT marketplaces to see derivate projects of the main NFT such as BAYC, Doodles, and CryptoPunks. The project Squiggles was not different, minting on the 10th of February 2022 for a whopping 1 Ethereum (Dutch Auction starting price). 

The Story of Squiggles

This project garnered a large amount of hype in the NFT space, having over 200k followers on Twitter and over 350k on their Discord. Many comparisons were made to the project Doodles, which is a blue-chip NFT collection, although it must be disclosed many derivatives have been created from Doodles.

The thing that made Squiggles stand out from the rest of the derivatives was its extremely high mint price, around $3100. As per any Dutch Auction style, the price reduced by 0.05ETH every 10 minutes until the NFT had been sold. Assuming the project sold its 10,000 collection at the 1ETH mark, it would have pocked over $3 million from primary market sales alone. This caused confusion and led to reports from the community of the project being a cash grab or rug pull. 

The team behind the project had been shrouded in mystery, never revealing their true identity on the Squiggles website. Due to this, rumours began to circulate that the project was purely a rug, and a 57-page document outlining this was published. The original document was removed, but many copies had been created and circulated and shared on social media platforms such as Twitter. Within this document, which has reportedly been sent to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for investigation, the team behind Squiggles was also part of NFT rug pulls in the past. The other projects they are supposedly a part of have been: League of Sacred Devils, League of Divine Beings, Vault of Gems, Lucky Buddhas, Dirty Dogs, Sinful Souls and Faceless. It also revealed their real names, claiming that the team was made up of [redacted].

OpenSea.io Removing the Collection

Opensea, the leading NFT marketplace on the Ethereum blockcahin, decided to remove and delist the project from their website following the reports of a rug pull. Some very prominent and big name in the NFT space on Twitter reported the events to their followers, including @Helloimmorgan and @theycallmeshwaz. They also were involved with uncovering the truth behind the story with Squiggles, and more than likely involved with contacting Opensea to remove the collection.

Response from Team

Below is a copy from Twitter where the Squiggles team responded to their work being removed from Opensea. While they claim innocence and a lack of understanding as to why their work was removed, they also directed their followers to LooksRare for continued purchase of the NFTs. On LooksRare, the floor price is 0.35ETH, while on their own website it is 0.3ETH, much less than the Dutch Auction price they started with at 1ETH.

Doodles3DClub

To add even more fuel to the fire, a project known as Doodles3DClub minted exactly two weeks before Squiggles did a sneak peek of their work. It seems quite obvious they also created that other collection or probably ripped it off. Users are sceptical that the team never had the art for 10,000 3D doodles and decided to ultimately change their direction towards Squiggles. By looking further into their website, it can be seen from January 14th, 2022, and shows that the art from the Doodles3dclub and Squiggles website is an exact 1:1 copy.

Community Response

The community is, as can be understood, not very happy with this disaster. The creators have not done anything to reassure the community, and in looking up the go to place for NFTs in Twitter and Reddit, its obvious that this project is dead in the water. While I cannot officially say it is a rug, all signs point in that direction.

Below is a copy of some of the responses on reddit where a user posted an article regarding the events of Squiggles. As you can see, the general response is one of disappointed, deceit, and happiness that this has been uncovered. The reddit thread can be found here

There was also controversy with a giveaway, in which winners were chosen but from the shown Tweets, available here, never received their rewards. The creators have not responded to that, and whether or not the rewards have since been sent is unknown, but it shows even further signs of dishonesty from the Creators of Squiggles.

Conclusion

There can only really be one conclusion from all of these event. A group decided to create a collection of art but didnt have the art available. They either decided to copy and rip off another project, or not have enough pieces in their collection. They put in the hours creating a community and following, and made some decent profits when they released the works for sale. The strong community in the NFT space noticed something was wrong and took action, leading to the collection getting removed from OpenSea and the community starting to ask questions. While its excellent that this apparent rug pull has been stopped in its tracks, it does leave a sour taste for many who invested into the project when minting began. Overall, be aware when pursuing NFTs and understand even the most legitimate looking projects can have malicious intentions.

Have a great day, I hope you enjoyed the read.

Peace. CryptoGod-1.

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