It has been a lacklustre year for NFTs. Digital assets sales figures slipped from $12.5 billion to $8.4 billion between Q1 and Q2 of 2022 and then plummeted to $.34 billion in Q3, per a report by DappRadar. The mammoth 72 percent drop in sales has led many to believe that the NFT bubble has finally burst. A notion that is backed by the fact that several prominent NFTs have been cancelled, dropped or shelved, the most recent of which is CNN’s Vault.

The team behind the project took to Twitter to announce that it was “time to say goodbye” and that CNN would no longer be “developing or maintaining” the Vault community. The update drew reactions of shock and disappointment, while some users even accused CNN of orchestrating a rug pull and are considering legal action.

Launched in June 2022, Vault was a marketplace for its short video and image NFTs associated with CNN’s coverage of historic events. The project had its fair share of success too, racking up over $329,700 in sales since its inception.

The main reason behind the shuttering of the project seems to be the crypto winter, which has caused NFT sales to dry up. Fortunately for investors, CNN is planning to compensate collectors with tokens or stablecoins based on the purchase price of their NFTs.

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“The distribution will be either FLOW tokens or stablecoins deposited into each collector’s wallet. We are currently working out the details but expect the distribution amount to be roughly 20 percent of the original mint price for each Vault NFT owned,” said a CNN representative on the project’s Discord Channel.

While the CNN project is a real eyebrow-raiser, it is not the first project to be cancelled or shelved. Back in February, two projects decided to go back on their NFT launch plans. The first was Team17’s MetaWorms NFT project and the second was the World Wildlife Federation’s “tokens for nature” NFT collection.

Team17 cancelled work on the project after receiving severe backlash from the gaming community. For some reason, gamers do not hold a positive outlook toward mainstream companies attempting to integrate NFTs into their games. This has led to several NFT games biting the dust before they can even take off.

For instance, in December 2021, renowned developer GSC Game World partnered with DMarket to include NFTs in its much-awaited FPS game, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chernobyl. However, after severe backlash from the gaming community, GSC cancelled the initiative the next day.

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More recently, in April this year, Ubisoft announced that it would no longer create non-fungible tokens (NFTs) for its hit game, Ghost Recon: Breakpoint. When the NFT project was launched, Ubisoft saw significant uproar from its fans. While the company positioned the NFTs as a way to reward players who racked up over 600 hours of game time, the gaming community has seen them as a scheme to milk gamers rather than provide NFTs with actual gameplay utility.

Environment issues are another reason why NFT projects come to a dead-end. In February, the World Wildlife Federation (WWF) ended its sale of NFTs after conservationists reacted furiously, citing the emissions associated with generating NFTs. Many users even cancelled their monthly donations to the NGO after it launched the NFT collection. Following the negative market sentiment, WWF cancelled the sale of the NFTs, less than 48 hours after they were launched.

The NFT collection by music band The Gorillaz met a similar fate. In March 2021, the band announced a line of NFTs to celebrate its debut album turning 20 years old. Many fans cited the band’s pro-environmental stance as a reason not to touch the NFTs. For whatever reason, the NFT collection never dropped, and in June, Jamie Hewlett, a co-founder of the Gorillaz, said the NFTs had been cancelled.

Conclusion

NFTs may have been all the rage over the last few years. However, environmental concerns and the continuing crypto winter have cast a shadow over the once-booming market. Faced with these issues, CNN isn’t the only NFT project to crash and burn, and perhaps it might not be the last. The only good news here is that the digital asset market is cyclical, and the current low might be followed by higher highs and an even bigger boom.

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