The Defiant

Sad Frog NFT Holders Furie-ous After OpenSea Delisting

A copyright battle is being waged in the NFT space.  On August 16, Sad Frogs District, a collection of 7,000 Ethereum-based non-fungible tokens (NFTs), was delisted from OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace. According to the OpenSea team, the action was taken in response to a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown request by Matt Furie,…

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Sad Frog NFT Holders Furie-ous After OpenSea Delisting

A copyright battle is being waged in the NFT space.

On August 16, Sad Frogs District, a collection of 7,000 Ethereum-based non-fungible tokens (NFTs), was delisted from OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace.

According to the OpenSea team, the action was taken in response to a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown request by Matt Furie, the creator of Pepe the Frog. According to the request, Furie is the “sole and exclusive owner” of Pepe the Frog and as such, Sad Frogs District is infringing on his copyright.

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Understandably, this did not go down well with holders of Sad Frog NFTs, who had to fight through a gas war in order to mint the tokens when they dropped on August 8. At the time, gas fees on Ethereum reached as high as 1000 gwei. Some users paid $300 or more to mint the Sad Frogs, which were sold for 0.05 ETH apiece.

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As over 90% of NFT secondary market sales take place on OpenSea, a delisting means that the resale market for Sad Frogs is essentially dead. Although, they are still available on another NFT marketplace Rarible.

The Sad Frogs team has submitted a counter DMCA request to OpenSea.

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Stones in a Glass House?

Crypto Twitter was quick to point out that Peg 95 from Furie’s Pegz project, a set of extremely expensive 1/1 NFTs, bears a striking resemblance to Star Wars character Jabba the Hutt. This prompted some to call for Disney, the copyright owner, to take action against Furie.

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Still, this isn’t the first time that Furie has targeted an NFT project. In February, Non Fungible Pepes returned funds to investors after a similar complaint.

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And so crypto trader Pentoshi seems to have seen it coming.

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The Defiant reached out to the Sad Frogs team, and a community moderator who goes by SkYwArD had the following comment: “The only thing that was accomplished today was hurting a whole bunch of people who had nothing to do with the issue that Mr. Furie is fighting. Collateral damage or not, the people affected were surely not the ones Matt takes issue with. Our community is amazing, tell him to stop by and see it… Maybe he’ll reconsider this whole thing.”

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