[NFTEarth] [FINAL] [STIP - Round 1]

Archive Short Term Incentives Program (STIP) Round 1
1

SECTION 1: APPLICANT INFORMATION

Applicant Name: Weston Nelson, Ihsan Rahman, Elias Pederiva, SirJoey

Project Name: NFTEarth

Project Description: NFTEarth is not aiming to be just another NFT marketplace; it’s a project focused on transforming what non-fungible technology means, and what it enables for all participants in the space. At its core, NFTEarth is an L2 (Layer 2) NFT Marketplace and protocol designed to provide users with an extraordinary platform for buying, selling, and earning rewards through the exchange of digital collectibles and NFTs.

Team Members and Qualifications:

  • Weston Nelson (Project Lead) WΞston is involved with several DeFi protocols and DAOs. His background is in traditional finance, most notably at Fidelity Investments where he was fortunate to learn directly from some of the best asset managers in the world. He is helping to shape the strategic direction of the DAO.

  • Ihsan Rahman (Lead Developer) Ryuzaki01 has over a decade of experience in web application and smart contract development, specifically in the NFT domain. His strengths include React and mobile application development, and significant experiences with Progressive Web Apps (PWAs). For NFTEarth he focuses on the public website and contract interactions.

  • Maestro (Head of Marketing) Maestro is the marketing lead at NFTEarth, in charge of building the brand and social awareness for the protocol. Maestro has vast NFT ecosystem experience across Ethereum Mainnet NFT trading platforms.

  • SirJoey (Head of Business Development) SirJoey is a web3 OG with significant experience in the NFT space and a strong interest in helping NFTs gain wider adoption. He is tasked with leading the BD initiatives for NFTEarth.

Project Links:

Contact Information:

Do You Acknowledge That Your Team Will Be Subject to a KYC Requirement?: Yes

SECTION 2: GRANT INFORMATION

Detail the requested grant size, provide an overview of the budget breakdown, specify the funding and contract addresses, and describe any matching funds if relevant.

Requested Grant Size: 195,000 ARB

Grant Matching: N/A

Grant Breakdown: The funds raised will be utilized for distribution of ARB through Arbitrum based contracts for NFT developers, builders, and creators, and contracts that allow for protocols to incentivize the trading of unique collections with ARB incentives on the new campaign we will launch aimed towards incentivizing new user growth through a brand new gamified incentive campaign on Arbitrum. We will also use the ARB incentives to increase NFT liquidity across Arbitrum - by incentivizing creating listings / making bids - (building NFT liquidity) - in addition to just trading on the NFT marketplace contracts. This is to emulate in large part the success Blur experience on Mainnet. We think Arbitrum can be home to a more well-designed and fun campaign to spark NFT activity across the ecosystem.

Funding Address: NFTEarth DAO Multisig: 0xC24223341415Bc8CaB0ffA5C2A6200d835fB1FF5

Funding Address Characteristics: This is a Safe Multisig, with a 3/7 confirmation requirement in place for executing transactions.

Contract Address: N/A at present - A potential use case that has been discussed for this would potentially include the Seaport Wrapper contract to be developed to incentivize trading on specific NFT collections with $ARB tokens, and other similar contracts like this where other partner protocols across the Arbitrum ecosystem can simply work with the NFTEarth team to incentivize whatever NFT collection they would like to, helping the entire Arbitrum ecosystem at large.

SECTION 3: GRANT OBJECTIVES AND EXECUTION

Clearly outline the primary objectives of the project and the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) used to measure success. This helps reviewers understand what the project aims to achieve and how progress will be assessed.

Objectives: The primary objectives for this grant are to drive user adoption to Arbitrum in the non-fungible space by creating new and novel utility and experiences from what currently exists in the NFT landscape. We believe that Arbitrum can become the home to NFT activity across all of web3 given the low transaction costs and existing large user base. We also believe a new strategy needs to be executed on to achieve this, because what has been attempted thus far, not only on L2s, but Mainnet as well, is not working. With our native protocol token NFTE that can be used in conjunction with many marketplace activities, we can create and environment for real stickiness of user growth, as opposed to what has been observed with numerous grant distribution programs that have nearly always led to the funds being used as nothing more than mercenary capital. The team has acquired significant experience in why making the transition for users to L2s is so difficult and will use this in all decision making to increase the overall trading of NFTs on Arbitrum as opposed to on Ethereum Mainnet. If you really take a minute to think about it; it is really odd that after all the time of L2s being live, Arbitrum, that NFT activity has remained completely stagnant despite lower cost solutions existing - we plan to leverage our views as to why this is the case to the fullest extent possible in order to create real and powerful momentum away from Mainnet to Arbitrum, both in terms of users and volume in USD.

Our proposal aims to implement a strategic rewards distribution approach that not only garners substantial participation in the Arbitrum ecosystem and catalyzes NFT activity, but also yields measurable and impactful outcomes that can be directly attributed to the campaigns implemented by NFTEarth, such as the very first campaign, which will be a trade-to-earn campaign where liquidity and volume is incentivized, and boosted incentives are provided to those who move from Ethereum Mainnet to Arbitrum.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):

  • Total new users interacting with marketplace contracts. As of right now, there are essentially ~0 daily active NFT traders per NFTScan and other NFT analytics platforms. Ethereum Mainnet giants like OpenSea and Blur are averaging around 10,000 and 2,000 respectively. We believe we can onboard this many users with a well targeted and designed campaign to show why users should be conducting their NFT transactions on Arbitrum.

  • Volume in $ USD traded on Arbitrum. Similar to unique addresses, this number in real-time is very low. By offering incentives to large traders on Mainnet, and using distribution channels to reach them that we know they are available at (onchain messaging via DeBank for instance, onchain queries made to Galxe for new campaigns, etc.) we can convince them to move to Arbitrum and finally create a sustainable non-fungible marketplace and ecosystem for all of Arbitrum to benefit from and have for many years to come.

How will receiving a grant enable you to foster growth or innovation within the Arbitrum ecosystem?: Building the infrastructure for UX similar to mainnet is lacking sorely on Arbitrum, as well as incentivized campaigns for trading and creating non-fungible collections and other use cases. By using the grant to incentivize NFT activity, many new users will join the Arbitrum ecosystem and conduct a multitude of transactions types as well such as Minting, Buying, Selling, Creating NFTs, etc.

Justification for the size of the grant: This is an appropriate size grant because it will provide enough runway for the team to demonstrate powerful and tangible results, while also within a short enough time frame to advance to the next stages of planned growth. The vision for NFTEarth is to become the largest NFT and non-fungible protocol in web3, with the aim to outperform OpenSea and Blur in both volume and users, but this will take more time than what is being presented here in this specific grant proposal, but is part of the long-term roadmap nonetheless.

Execution Strategy: 50% of the of the funds will be used to incentivize building NFT liqduitiy on Arbitrum (creating listings and making bids).

30% of the of the funds will be used to incentivize trading activity on Arbitrum specific collections, as well as bring new collection creators to Layer2.

20% of the funds will be used in direct outreach to existing collections and potentially new ones to incentivize them to come to Arbitrum to create and trade / build their communities.

Funds will be held and distributed on the following 3/7 multisig address: 0xC24223341415Bc8CaB0ffA5C2A6200d835fB1FF5

Grant Timeline: Based on the distribution schedule planned and already budgeted costs to build the necessary infrastructure to create a world-class NFT experience for users on Arbitrum, the grant will be distributed in total within 4 months of approval. Growth metrics dashboards will be submitted no later than one week after each month that passes among the various initiatives. After the grant period concludes, NFTEarth is committed to extensive evaluation of the grant’s impact in order to determine what worked well, and what could be optimized, and share this data for all protocols looking to help grow the Arbitrum ecosystem.

Do you accept the funding of your grant streamed linearly for the duration of your grant proposal, and that the multisig holds the power to halt your stream? Yes

SECTION 4: PROTOCOL DETAILS

Provide details about the Arbitrum protocol requirements relevant to the grant. This information ensures that the applicant is aligned with the technical specifications and commitments of the grant.

Is the Protocol Native to Arbitrum?: Yes - Arbitrum is the focus of NFTEarth at this point in time. The team believes in a cross-chain future, but has chosen to launch its long-term staking program on Arbitrum and focus on building NFT user traction on Arbitrum as well.

On what other networks is the protocol deployed?: Ethereum, Base, Optimism, Linea, Mantle, BNB Chain, Avalanche, Polygon

What date did you deploy on Arbitrum?: February, 2023

Protocol Performance: NFTEarth is a young protocol - with high visibility and large ambitions for growth and a targeted strategy for user acquisition to Arbitrum and transaction growth on Arbitrum. The team has already built and launched a successful gamified airdrop campaign that led to an active daily user count of 264 users as measured onchain by NFTScan. We plan to increase this by multiple times on Arbitrum.

Protocol Roadmap:

  • Launch Omnichain token to serve as native protocol token for NFTEarth (Completed July 2023)

  • Build in-app Omnichain bridge powered by LayerZero (Completed July 2023)

  • Build first Chainlink VRF enabled game on Layer2 (Completed August 2023)

  • Enable Buying/Selling of NFTs on Arbitrum in $NFTE, and $ETH (Completed August 2023)

  • Build first AI-infused NFT Avatars (Completed September 2023)

  • Deploy xNFTE Staking Contract Deployment (Deployed September 2023)

  • Arbitrum Gitcoin Grants Round Participant (Present)

  • Staking UI Completion (End of September 2023)

  • Add $ARB as payment currency on NFT marketplace (End of September 2023)

  • Epoch DAO Accounting Reports for Revenue Sharing (Mid October 2023)

  • NFT Utility for Earthling + SmartNFT Avatars: Release AI infused NFTs with reinforced machine learning models that users can tailor to their preferences such that the NFT Avatar can become their very own personal assistant that grows to know the user better, over time (End of October 2023)

  • Additional Exchange Listings/Collaborations (CEX listing by Q1 2024)

  • Applications for Grants to secure DAO runway (October 2023/on-going)

  • Build and deploy decentralized web3 SocialFi messaging application (October 2023)

  • Build and deploy decentralized web3 name service to compete with ENS and UD - that provides full integration with the NFTEarth chat application - Earth Domains. (November 2023)

  • Applicant for Ethereum Foundation for a grant to further expand and build AI into NFT use-cases (November 2023/on-going)

2024

  • Establish over $1M in onchain liquidity via the brand new and innovative LP staking mechanism xNFTE has brought to Arbitrum - staking of an LP position as the way to obtain xNFTE - to enable large buyers and institutions to get involved in NFTE ecosystem and extension, further bolster the long-term sustainability of NFTs on Arbitrum.

  • Complete CEX listing on Tier A exchange (Binance, Coinbase, Huobi, KuCoin, MEXC) for enhanced liquidity for all users across the world.

  • Complete enhancements to PWA and deploy native mobile applications for iOS and Android

Audit History: N/A - in progress. The team attempts to use audited forks wherever possible such as the case with the Fortune game that is live (the smart contract is a fork of YOLO on Ethereum Mainnet which is audited).

SECTION 5: Data and Reporting

Provide details on how your team is equipped to provide data and reporting on grant distribution.

Is your team prepared to create Dune Dashboards for your incentive program?: Yes

Does your team agree to provide bi-weekly program updates on the Arbitrum Forum thread? Yes - we use Cloudflare Analytics, Vercel Analytics, as well as onchain tools such as The Graph to monitor dapp activity and can share updates in a timely manner or whenever requested.

Does your team acknowledge that failure to comply with any of the above requests can result in the halting of the program’s funding stream?: Y

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Great project!
Time to bring NFT’s back.

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It’s so exciting just thinking about all the possibilities here. I think Arbitrum could win the largest market share of NFT volume right now even by incentivizing users in the right way to move from Ethereum.

So what will this take? A ton of effort by the team no doubt - reaching out to L1 teams 1 by 1 even to persuade them to move to Arbitrum will be required I think for sure. But it will work.

And once they are on L2, Arbitrum becomes the home of all non-fungible activity and innovation for years to come. Couldn’t be a better time to totally capture the market in such a “bear market” now is the time to prepare - NFT tech is still in its infancy.

I would love to see streaming platforms that disrupt Spotify and Netflix come to life on Arbitrum - all possible with NFTs on L2!

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How many active unique users does NFTEarth have?

Perhaps my focus has been mostly on DeFi protocols, but I have never heard of it before.

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Hello @NFTEarth thank you for submitting. Please note your proposed use of the ARB incentives are not eligible for this program as per the stated rules quoted below.

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Hello!

This is probably exactly the case! We have watched Arbitrum secure the DeFi landscape but fall behind in the NFT space and this is what we would like to change.

That is likely because it is a very young protocol! We have just published our public Dune Analytics Dashboard - Accessible here, which shows 20 unique addresses (as of this moment) that have staked NFTE which just launched this week. On average we have seen 1-5 transactions/per day in the Fortune application (Similar onchain game using Chainlink VRF from LooksRare except built by us on Arbitrum). We have averaged around 10 marketplace transactions as well - and the LayerZero OFT token is traded, NFTE, (view on DexScreener or CoinGecko) on average around 75 trades/day.

Also be sure to check out the staking profile that DeBank has just added to their web3 portfolio tracker, which is the NFTEarth Staking program, xNFTE - this is in essence a modified version of veBAL and a huge component of what differentiates our platform vs. any other in existence.

As we mentioned in comparison to even the largest protocols in existence users in the NFT space have to a large extent disappeared and this is what we can change. We believe we can attract a similar size user base of the largest protocols in a rapid manner. For example, LooksRare has averaged about 100 users/day, Rarible around 50, Blur around 2,000 and OpenSea around 10,000.

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Thanks for the clarification @Matt_StableLab ! We will be sure to update this then so as to adhere to program guidelines. Onboarding new developers through onchain Arbitrum contracts that stream incentives for building new smart contracts for use in NFT trading is something we have had clarified as “an Arbitrum contract” though, so it would certainly be great to get further clarification on this aspect… because we think this is not only a novel use-case, but also a great way to highlight some of the capabilities of streaming platforms and doing so on Arbitrum L2 where the costs to manage such programs are much lower.

We will update the marketplace development to make clearer that these are also Arbitrum related contracts!

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Just to confirm, the project lead - Weston, is the same person who also was a part of L2DAO. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Would be great to disclose any of this information too, as it feels quite relevant to Arbitrum DAO.

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Even though the NFT market is currently sleeping on its laurels, NFTs will play an important role in many areas of life in the future. The various possible applications are only just beginning. If Arbitrum is to play an important role in the future, not only in the Defi area but also in NFT space, we must support innovative NFT protocols such as NFTEarth now.
Since its inception, NFTEarth has shown that it is capable of developing such solutions. The adaptation and further development of the veBal system for revenue sharing of the platform that was just deployed is a good example. Therefore, thumbs up from my side.

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Such a great project!! Keep it up guys!

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NFTE is Actually a Rare Gem of a Project if Given the Chance :gem::gem:

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@NFTEarth could you please elaborate on which on-chain actions you will be incentivizing here? Also please note you will need to disclose any contracts you will be incentivizing before distributing funds in your bi-weekly summaries.

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NFTEarth is just a friendly innovated project what the NFT community needs.
For sure layer2 is going to be relevant and the future for the current blockchain.

Keep on the pace guy’s and deliver some beauty!

Kind regards,

RoadToMillions

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Hi @Matt_StableLab - yes absolutely - we wanted to give a thorough answer here that also expands a bit to our overall vision for how we believe this STIP can catalyze NFT activity on Arbitrum, being that our aim is to try and solve a challenge quite a bit different than what essentially all the other projects in this STIP initiative will be working towards (for us, meaning to get NFT activity on Arbitrum moving again) and we plan to take a very straightforward approach.

The kickstart of activity is to be designed to be straightforward and basic in order to get a pulse check for NFT users and potential best uses of the resources, and then get more creative in incentive structure as we gather data from what is working well and what can be improved.

  1. We plan to incentivize trading in ARB currency on the NFTEarth marketplace contract. (You can currently trade on NFTEarth in 3 currencies: ETH, NFTE, ARB) and by incentivizing ARB, this is a net positive effect for the token of the entire ecosystem, so we believe this is a great place to begin and then evaluate how effective it is at getting traction. We plan to allocate a fixed % of the grant to this bucket, and for users to earn their share of this incentive pro-rata to the overall volume traded per week/Epoch, which we will then make claimable via Merkle distribution or direct airdrop to user addresses. So, we will filter the Seaport contract activity (what we currently use as our primary marketplace contract) for all trades in ARB currency 0x912CE59144191C1204E64559FE8253a0e49E6548 and then share results accordingly.

  2. Next, we have deployed the first onchain game on Arbitrum that uses Chainlink VRF to determine the game winners in a fair and transparent manner, called Fortune, and we believe this could spark significant activity on Arbitrum. This is our in-app game Fortune, at contract address 0xB11eD4D3b3D8Ace516Ceae0a8D4764BbF2B08c50 and it is modeled after the game LooksRare has deployed on Mainnet called YOLO. It’s fun and engaging, gamified with music and sound effects, a fun graphical animation, and enhanced with user capabilities for gamers to chat real-time during game rounds. Overall we think a great way to get activity moving in the NFT space. Users can enter rounds with NFTs, ETH, NFTE, and ARB, with the value of the NFT entered with calculated based on the floor price oracle at 0xAeB1D03929bF87F69888f381e73FBf75753d75AF provided by Reservoir Tools.

  3. Next, we have deployed an onchain raffle game to Arbitrum, which we have also modeled after the raffle the LooksRare team deployed on Mainnet, and is at contract address 0xC597E0eC62b44feB0eF3bb59B374003d51E571C9 that we would intend to reward users of the platform with in ARB incentives as part of an on-going raffle for platform participation every ~12 hours.

  4. Last, is our new voting incentive mechanism developed as part of the NFTEarth Staking Rewards Program. We have deployed a mechanism called xNFTE, which is in large part based on the veBAL system, where in partnership with Gamma Strategies, we enable users to create a fungible UniswapV3 LP position that can be staked to acquire voting power through xNFTE (xNFTE is what represents value accrual and voting power for NFTEarth). As many DeFi protocols (Curve, Convex, Balancer, etc.) hold weekly gauge votes for incentives, we now have the same infrastructure in place onchain to do this in the NFT realm, but instead of incentivizing an LP pair, it will be an NFT collection (or some other behavior ie., mints, collection creation, or other TBD) - and voters can exercise their voting power gained from being stakers in the NFTEarth ecosystem; to vote on our Snapshot Space in the weekly incentives vote to direct incentives. We foresee this being used not only by the DAO to help direct emissions of the NFTE token, but also enable a means for any protocol or individual to - in a permissionless fashion - create incentives for an NFT that they would like to mint or promote trading of, and can then provide the incentives to do so for. The FeeDistributor contract for rewards to be deposited to and for all stakers to claim from on a weekly basis is at 0x9138A2e628f92a42397B3B600E86047AE49aCa98 and this is where these incentives would be sent to.

The final onchain component is what we have spent the most time designing for how we would like to primarily use this batch of STIP - and then build this into a long-term and sustainable incentive program, by gamifying the entire system - is by using our Arbitrum marketplace in conjunction with each user profile tied to the onchain wallet address the user has linked to their NFTEarth profile, in order to accumulate points in a leaderboard and game system, where XP is accrued for the onchain actions desired.

This would be similar to the enormously successful campaign Blur ran on Mainnet last year, except completely optimized for Arbitrum - where users are incentivized to conduct many actions onchain, and are rewarded correspondingly. For example, list NFTs = XP points, make offers = XP points, place trades = XP points. And then some examples to further refine this, special caveats as well, such as if the user is an xNFTE staker (meaning long-term supporter of the protocol and by extension the Arbitrum ecosystem = boost in XP points, if they trade in ARB = another boost in XP points. We would have Seasons and display a page in the app called Leaderboard that much like Blur’s leaderboard, or GMX’s top traders dashboard, shows the current results, and also resets every 24 hours and keeps track of total XP points accumulated by each address throughout the season. This gamified system of incentives is what we are most excited about building and what we believe holds the greatest potential to genuinely turn Arbitrum into the unquestionable L2 NFT leader, and we can’t wait to build it!

Warm regards,

NFTEarth Team

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@NFTEarth Thank you for these added details and clarity. Your submission now meets all requirements to be considered for a snapshot vote.

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Regardless of the long replies claiming that accusations are false, I think I must once again reiterate that NFTEarth’s Optimism granted OP was obfuscated and sent to the founder’s Coinbase as USDC on multiple occasions.

Like I said before, past actions do not speak for future ones, and this grant itself proposes possibly valuable plans to grow Arbitrum. It is up to the delegates to vote for projects that will be the face of the chain.

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Absolutely false statement and out of context screenshot that was clearly a self depracating joke. We never launched or had any products so there was no users or money lost.

The same cannot be said about NFTE. There are well documented onchain transactions of token manipulation and draining the LP. Some of these correspond to tweets from the project that would indicate a “pump and dump” scheme.

For example notice that there was a liquidity pull and steep -99% decline after this tweet. Not to mention that it is unacceptable for a project to speculate on their own token price. There seems to be strong evidence that the token is manipulated by known team wallets. If I am somehow ‘bias’ in my investigation than please refer to these other investigations from people that have no affiliation with me:

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Edit: There is as attempt to suppress this post by the NFTEarth Team. I am updating it as it provides extensive documentation relevant to the proposal and allocation of grant funds.

There is extensive documentation around Weston’s misdeeds as part of L2DAO, LFGrow, and NFTEarth. Detailing it all below and adding additional evidence based on my own onchain research.

Summary

Background and History

  1. L2DAO and Weston were caught dumping and bridging OP grant funds to Arbitrum and misrepresenting the circumstances to governance to avoid accountability
  2. L2DAO and Weston were caught granting themselves and dumping additional OP funds through NFTEarth and LFGrow multisigs they controlled, funneling funds to team addresses
  3. L2DAO and Weston failed to disclose its loss 10% of total L2DAO token supply until those tokens were accessed and dumped under suspicious circumstances

New Developments

Recent Findings

  • L2DAO and NFTEarth teams have promoted and sold utility NFTs while undisclosed using admin mint functions to mint themselves hundreds of NFTs
  • These NFTs appear to manipulate DAO voting, redirect OP voting rewards to personal wallets, are sold to fund a sybil network designed to earn NFTE airdrops and engage in suspicious NFTE trading
  • Admin mints reveal potential Weston alt accounts like 0xAdvetuer and RingoRollup used to imply to the L2DAO community that Weston the was not the sole proposer of grants to LFGrow and NFTEarth

Keyplayer

  • Weston Nelson: Team/multisig member of LFGrow and NFTEarth, former team member of L2DAO that was removed after initial allegations were made. His doxxed wallet was responsible for initiating almost every transaction detailed below and his likely secondary multisig wallet is often used as a second signer.

Recent Finding Details

L2STATEOFMIND AdminMint Used to Dilute Holders, Sybil Airdrop, Funnel Rewards to Team, Washtrade

  • L2STATEOFMIND NFTs were extensively promoted as NFTs designed to allow L2DAO members to vote on which projects got OP grant funds, received OP airdrops for each voting cycle, and that wouldallow holders to earn double revenue share from the protocol.
  • L2DAO Team multisig minted $25,000 worth (~12% of total supply) L2STATEOFMIND NFTs to L2DAO/NFTEarth/LFGrow Team and Weston linked addresses over a series of months.
  • A portion of these were minted to newly created EOA wallets linked through the flow of funds to his addresses and a Coinbase deposit address used by him to L2DAO/NFTEarth/LFGrow team member Weston Nelson in small batches, seemingly to avoid detection.
  • These wallets were then used as part of a sybil network apparently designed to vote OP grants for his projects, siphon off Optimism Grant voting rewards to personal wallets, and potentially sybil his own NFTEarth airdrop.
  • Once the voting rewards program and airdrop were complete, a NFTEarth trading contest was launched allowing many of these NFTs to be dumped juicing the marketplace stats and giving the sybil network more funds to engage in manipulative NFTEarth trading.
  • Another portion of these (~100) were minted directly to a NFTEarth multisig before days later being returned to the L2DAO multisig demonstrating the L2DAO team was aware and issued no disclosure of the events
  • This could suggest that Weston minted these 100 NFTs without team permission, something reinforced by the comments to Exosphere, resulting in an ongoing cover up by the team. One they maintain even after being publicly informed of the abuse.
    Screenshot%202023-07-06%20at%207.55.13%20AM
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FEW22 AdminMint Used to Dilute Holders, Sybil Airdrop, Funnel Rewards to Team, Washtrade

  • FEW22 NFTs were extensively promoted, sold with a promise of giving holders “additional utility” on NFTEarth that has never actually been delivered
  • Team minted $65,000 worth of FEW22 NFTs (~43% of the complete collection) to team addresses and Weston linked wallets, even as team continued to promote the mint
  • Following a similar pattern as with the L2STATEOFMIND NFTs, some were minted to newly created EOA wallets linked to Weston and some directly to NFTEarth controlled multisigs
  • Many of the same addresses received both the L2STATEOFMIND NFT as well as the FEW22 NFTs and engaged in the same wash trade and Sybil activities.

EARTHLINGS NFT Dilution

  • EARTHLINGS are an NFT collection introduced by NFTEarth with the promise of the ability to stake the NFTs to earn protocol revenue and NFTE token rewards
  • NFTEarth team has minted at least 400 EARTHLINGS to its team multisig without disclosing this to its community
  • Based on previous behavior with L2STATEOFMIND and FEW22, seems like other mints need to reviewed for potential fraudulent or sybil mints

The minting of these NFTs to team addresses reveals a sophisticated interconnected sybil network that connects directly to a Weston used Coinbase deposit address.

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Lets stick to onchain evidence and not out of context screenshots.

When we were in the pre-launch phase of our exchange we were drafting a grant with Weston from Layer2Dao. At the time NFTEarth did not exist. The founder (Weston) stole our proposal, left our group chat, started his own project (NFTEarth), and applied for his own grant awarding himself 27,500 $OP!

When I documented where the OP went I was suprised to see that they transfered the funds to 20 different wallets, dumped them, and used it to wash trade on NFTE accounting for 99% of their volume!

At the time these fradulent transfers were made the founder bragged on Twitter that they had exceeded Opensea trading volume organically.

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I’d like to address this with a single and comprehensive post as this is precisely how Dicasso attacked the NFTEarth team before the last Optimism grant vote, right before it went live, with the intent to cause enough confusion amongst Delegates such that they would wait to fund further growth for NFTEarth, he took to Twitter and publicly posted a false lie then, just like he has done yesterday, which was determined by the OP Foundation to be an action of gross misconduct and violation of the OP rules, for which he was SUSPENDED by the OP Collective and asked to publicly apologize to NFTEarth for these actions, once the situation was resolved.

First and most important: the team, nor myself, have not nor were ever determined to have broken any of the rules. There was not even a statement made as to the situation by the OP Foundation after all this drama created by competitors including Dicasso, to discredit the work being done by NFTEarth to build a Quix replacement on Optimism. The case has been closed, and has been closed for nearly 6 months now.

2nd, you showing up on Arbitrum forums out of the blue with new alt accounts posting for the first time, Dicasso tweeting publicly about a project working around the clock diligently to help catalyze NFT activity? This itself SPEAKS volumes. Anyone interested in genuinely observing the situation can see you have a grudge that cannot be let go of. After you have threatened me multiple times, have smeared my personal name for simply refusing to give in to your spreading of misinformation to try and influence voting outcomes to hurt NFTEarth, I still choose to wish you well, I wish you the best of luck Dicasso. But I also ask and am prominently demanding that you refrain from spreading nonfactual statements here - or anywhere - as they do NOTHING positive for the ecosystem, and only destroy ecosystems: point proven with what ultimately happened on Optimism. There is no more NFT ecosystem on Optimism at this point in tine. Actions taken to sabatoge NFTEarth, try and harm my own individual reputation…all these did was amount to nothing except destroying an ecosystem. This is not leadership, and this is not how communities are built and I hope readers see this for what it is and know this is NOT how Arbitrum will get to the top, by following similar paths as what has occurred before. The way forward is to build, stay focused on KPIs, metrics, and user growth, and not get lost in dramaticized posts about fake stories.

Last, as for the entire purpose why you are here now, which is blatantly to simply stir the pot, shake up a beehive and create FUD for no reason than to further harm the team from authentically sparking NFT activity again on L2s, I would highlight and reiterate the FINAL resolution of what occurred on Optimism:

The NFTEarth team received an incubation funding from L2DAO to build an NFT marketplace. This was voted on Snapshot and passed with ~98% in favor of incubating the marketplace. Nothing more or less than this. Which the team delivered on, and did so in 40 days. Unlike several others teams pitching new marketplaces to replace Quix, including yourself. We have been live since January of this year, and managed to stay live despite incredibly difficult NFT ecosystem headwinds, with not a single second of downtime. Upon receiving the initial incubation tokens, we were operating with the understanding we could use such funds as we best saw fit to accomplish the task of building a live and functional L2 marketplace, again - this being the only key objective for winning the incubation funding. This included covering ALL hard costs such as developer salaries, cloud server expenses, RPC infra payments and any other associated costs to get the marketplace up and running, as fast as humanly possible. End of story.

I was not even a core member of the L2DAO team that originally received their original OP grant when the team applied for it, I did not help in writing it nor designing it in any way. So it is very important to note that the ENTIRE PREMISE of your allogations stem from breaking a so called “no-sale” rule. As NFTEarth received tokens not from the OP Foundation, and only through a vote as part of the OPIncubator from L2DAO, an entirely different entity, and through a conpletely different process via L2DAO vote, it was ultimately determined that NO RULE was in fact broken, and this was what sufficiently ended all your accusations.

There is nothing more to be said on the matter, myself and the team have DEMONSTRATED with our actions, over time, and through what we have buiilt, our clear commitment and competence in the NFT space, and we are fully committed to making Arbitrum to top destination for NFT activity across web3.

The team, and myself are available at any time if any Delegates or Foundation or team members have any questions at all - please do not hesitate to get in touch as we are happy and would genuinely like to address any and everything if there is a concern of any sort that remains. I am available for any Delegate or Foundation or team member to chat further in our Telegram groups and happy to hop on a live call as well, at anytime.

My Telegram handle is @ westonnelson,
I am available on X @ westonnelson and I am available on Discord @ westonnelson.

Sincerely,

Weston Nelson

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