Finn DeGods, the pseudonymous co-founder of DeLabs—the startup behind the valuable Ethereum NFT profile picture (PFP) collection DeGods and sister project y00ts—said on Wednesday that they would step away from the company after nearly two years.
“It’s finally time for me to move on to the next chapter,” Finn said on Twitter, noting that their transition away from the company had begun in July. “I am still bullish on DeGods and y00ts,” they added.
Amid headwinds in the NFT market for various PFP collections—and considerably volatile market activity around DeGods of late—prominent DeGods co-founder Rohun “Frank” Vora told Decrypt that the timing of Finn’s disclosure wasn’t ideal, in his view, but there are no hard feelings.
After co-founding DeGods almost 2 years ago in a small apartment with a few friends, it’s finally time for me to move on to the next chapter.
I’m forever grateful for this community, all the memories, lessons, and the amazing friends and teammates I’ve had the privilege to work…
— FINN (@finnydegods) August 16, 2023
“It was something that happened a few months ago. [Finn] just wasn’t the right skill set for the company,” Vora said. “He just didn’t scale with the growth of the project. It’s all love. I think it was tone-deaf posting it yesterday, but that’s all it is.”
Finn did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Decrypt.
Finn tweeted that his departure had “nothing to do with any recent events”—a likely reference to challenges that DeGods has faced in recent days between pushback to announcements and “whale” holders flooding the market with NFTs.
DeLabs announced last week that its y00ts PFP collection will migrate from Ethereum scaling network Polygon to the Ethereum mainnet. When DeLabs divulged the shift—the second migration after ditching Solana earlier this year—the team said it would return a $3 million grant from Polygon Labs that supported the previous move.
Soon thereafter, DeGods revealed its “Season 3” content drop, which included the ability for NFT holders to upgrade their PFP artwork and play a “points parlor” game that rewards holders for staking the NFTs. Since then, however, y00ts and DeGods have both seen sharply downward market movement.
DeGods’ floor price—or the cheapest NFT listed for sale on a secondary marketplace—has buckled since August 9 from around 8.7 ETH (about $15,900) to 4.3 ETH (about $7,750), according to data from NFT Price Floor.
The floor price for y00ts, meanwhile, has fallen from 1.7 ETH (about $2,950) to 1 ETH (about $1,750) during that same span, according to OpenSea.
Following the pre-reveal hype, the DeGods “Season 3” announcement didn’t appear to land well with some holders, resulting in pushback and initial price movement.
1. We thought DeGods needed to be “serious”.
That was our mistake. After digesting the community feedback, we realized that we were wrong.
DeGods are fun. So, we made them fun. pic.twitter.com/1OGILwWs5c
— DeGods (@DeGodsNFT) August 13, 2023
“Sorry to the DeGods & y00ts community for fumbling this so far,” Frank tweeted on August 10. “This is the part where everyone says ‘I told you so.’ I hate this part. I hate disappointing the community. No easy days. Processing everything. Adjusting approach. Not going anywhere.”
It didn’t take long for DeLabs to announce a pivot, changing the planned artwork “upgrade” into a “downgrade” with simpler, brighter color schemes. Like many DeGods announcements, it spawned a flurry of social media activity—but the NFT prices kept sinking.
The collapse was attributed last week to a single wallet that held about 200 DeGods NFTs and dumped them onto the market into bids on the marketplace Blur. Doing so helped tank the floor price for the project, while its associated DUST token also saw a steep decline last week amid large sales.
A single wallet just sold more than 100 DeGods into bids.
OpenSea has flagged them, though it’s very possible the algorithms are mis-identifying this.
Many grails dumped into collection bids. Price got down below 6 ETH though buyers have stepped in.
Bids now 6.68 ETH. pic.twitter.com/B6Rxsjwhlh
— NFTstats.eth (@punk9059) August 10, 2023
And this week, noted entrepreneur and trader Jeffrey “Machi Big Brother” Huang—who has previously pressured the floor price of other popular NFT collections like the Bored Ape Yacht Club with his large-scale trades—appeared to be unloading hundreds of DeGods NFTs on the open market through Blur on Thursday.
A wallet labeled as machibigbrother.eth using the Ethereum Name Service sold DeGods in several batches of ten or more below the collection’s floor price, according to Blur, which lists the wallet associated with Huang by its full address.
Huang had sold more than 325 DeGods NFTs during a 10-hour span on Thursday, according to Etherscan. As of this writing, Huang has 77 DeGods NFTs left.
Nature is healing, Machi is progressively selling his bags, without nuking the floor.@DeGodsNFT whales are putting the collection back on track 🫡
But I don’t understand, I thought “Degods had no whales supporting the project” 🤔 pic.twitter.com/f3QJZTsHBo
— Flayz (@_Flayzzz) August 17, 2023
Blur’s gamified incentives—where NFT traders can earn points for activities like buying and selling NFTs in exchange for an allotment of Blur’s BLUR token—are a big reason why the collection’s floor price will be hard-pressed to recover, tweeted Bitcoin Frontier Fund general partner Trevor Owens.
In just over a week, DeGods’ floor price has fallen by 50% amid major moves by DeLabs and market-shifting sales from whale traders. Even if Finn’s departure was in motion well before the recent drama began, the timing only adds to the recent turmoil around the typically buzzy NFT collection.
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