The Moonbirds NFT Project’s COO leaves the project abruptly for his own fund, taking a cache of Moonbirds collectibles worth $1.2 million.
On Monday, PROOF Collective and Moonbirds NFT founder Kevin Rose addressed Ryan Carson’s controversial Twitter announcement that he has left the Moonbirds project to start his own NFT venture fund. Carson was the project’s chief operating officer.
In his announcement, Carson said he has “never believed in a project, team, and community more in my life,” indicating good faith behind his exit. However, he implied that he was leaving because he was “also passionate about investing in NFTs, and I’d like to spend more of my time focusing on that.”
Carson further said what PROOF Collective needs is “a COO that has vast experience hyper-scaling companies” and ended his announcement by saying he is “still a very proud shareholder in PROOF, and I’ll continue to cheer on the team.”
Kevin Rose’s Reaction
The news of Carson’s exit was painted in a negative light based on the reaction of the broader NFT community. Many community members aired their frustrations over Carson’s departure, saying the latter purchased hundreds of thousands worth of Moonbirds before leaving, leveraging insider knowledge to plunder the collection’s undervalued editions.
It is said that Carson’s personal cache of Moonbirds currently holds a value of $1.2 million based mainly on floor prices. The former PROOF Collective COO purchased the collectibles before the value of Moonbirds skyrocketed days after its initial mint.
While project founder and longtime Internet entrepreneur Kevin Rose acknowledged that Carson was instrumental in the growth of PROOF and the launch of Moonbirds, he did claim that Carson’s actions violated the project’s internal policy. He said as much in a Twitter Spaces following the news of Carson’s exit.
Rose also implied during the Spaces event that he was clueless as to how much capital Carson planned to use to purchase Moonbirds NFTs after the collection’s release.
“I think one of the special things about Web3 is we can be transparent and share and learn from each other,” Rose said in Spaces. “I can tell you that there’s going to be a kind of communications policy put in place as well, moving forward.”
Rose also mentioned that he had waived Carson’s vesting cliff, a move stemming from the trust Rose invested in his personal relationship with Carson.
What it Means for Moonbirds NFT
Although negative reactions abound regarding Carson’s exit, others still hope that the Moonbirds NFT project will get past this learning curve and be better for it in the long term. At the time of writing, Moonbirds have a floor price of Ξ 29.88 or roughly $89,567 and have traded over Ξ 116,000 or about $340 million since it was minted on April 16. That is the most traded volume for any NFT project in 30 days.
“We are not the next Yuga Labs or Crypto Punks, we’re PROOF, and we’re going to keep being PROOF, and we’re confident that alone is a reason why we want to be here,”
Kevin Rose
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