- Paul will spend $2.3M on a buyback program to rebuy Base Eggs and Animals
- Eligible investors will get 0.1 ETH for each NFT submitted
- Paul never made any money from the project, he's suing the CryptoZoo team
Social media personality and Youtuber Logan Paul will refund some investors in his once ambitious, but failed CryptoZoo NFT project, Cointelegraph wrote. He is pledging personal funds in the amount of $2.3 million for a buyback program that involves repurchasing Base Eggs and Base Animals at the initial price.
Paul first announced CryptoZoo in 2021. It was created as a play-to-earn game that would let players buy, sell, breed and trade “exotic animals” represented as NFTs.
Players would purchase eggs that would eventually become animals. They would also generate ZOO tokens. OpenSea users have traded more than $6.7 million in Base Eggs.
A great disappointment
On January 4, Paul posted on X that the project’s failure to materialize was a huge disappointment for him. Investors have until Feb. 8 to submit claims for compensation.
Not every investor will be eligible for such, though. Those eligible will get 0.1 ETH for each NFT submitted. They may not move eligible NFTs out of their wallets. Holders of hybrid animal NFTs will not be eligible for refunds, and neither will holders of ZOO tokens. According to CoinGecko, ZOO tokens have practically no value at the moment.
A long time in coming?
In July 2023, Bankless Times wrote that investors in CryptoZoo had been waiting for refunds for more than six months, citing a YouTube video posted by an internet detective. They are collectively owed $2 million, which Paul had promised to pay back in January 2023. Paul stopped communicating with his former clients at the time.
Paul’s own recourse
Paul added on X that he had filed a lawsuit against CryptoZoo team members Eduardo Ibanez and Jake Greenbaum. He claimed the project was “derailed by bad actors…who betrayed the team while internally sabotaging the game.”
According to Paul, he never made any money from the project. He shifted all the blame to the other members of the team, accusing them of nefarious trading with the intention to commit fraud.
Social media personalities and celebrities have been active in the digital asset space, for better or for worse. In the latter case Kim Kardashian, Floyd Mayweather and Paul Pierce are in court for a class action lawsuit, in which they stand accused of improperly promoting EthereumMax, a crypto token no longer in circulation.
