The message does little to address the concerns of current players about Neopets entering into its second crypto project, but does confirm the legitimacy of the project and explains why the @Neopets Twitter account was calling the project a scam yesterday afternoon.
Read the announcement in full:
Valued Neopians,
We want to thank you all for sharing your thoughts, feedback, and concerns with us regarding the new line of NFT's created in partnership with Raydium. We understand that our recent announcement may have created more questions than answers and we want to take a moment to clarify some information about the future of NFT's and Neopets.
Q: Is this a scam? Are you really making NFTs?
A: Our partnership with Raydium, Solana, and Moonvault is legitimate! You may have seen a recent photo from Neopets stating this is a scam; this was due to an internal miscommunication error, and we sincerely apologize for any confusion this statement may have caused.
Q: "Why are NFT's more important than releasing new features?"
A: The good news is that they aren't! Please know that the NFT's in question were created by a partner company and did not impact the release schedules of the Neopets Team in any way; features and content have been developed and converted without interruption and we're excited to keep rolling out new features for the community in the future.
Q: "Why make NFTs?"
A: JumpStart is always looking for new opportunities to drive our brands and product forward into the future. We are constantly seeking new ways for players to engage with us and we see NFT's as a potential opportunity for the company in this regard. We are going to learn new things on this journey and want to encourage everyone to keep sharing their thoughts and feedback with us as we go so we can improve and adjust accordingly.
Q: "Aren't NFT's harmful to the environment?"
A: We've made an effort to partner with Raydium, a company that hosts their NFTs on Solana which strives to be a more environmentally friendly NFT solution than competitors. If you're interested in learning more about Raydium, check out their website here: https://raydium.gitbook.io/raydium/ or Solana here: https://www.solana.com
Q: "Why did an official announcement take so long?"
A: As with any partnership, there are numerous groups involved and multiple moving pieces. We apologize that an official statement took us longer than we would have liked and we will be working internally to speed this process up in the future.
We understand that our venture into NFT's may not be for all of our players, but want to reassure you all again that their development is happening independent of the support we provide to the Neopets site and players. We appreciate all of our players and value the time you've taken to share your thoughts with us. We hope you will continue to do so, and that the answers above provide a bit of clarity into the situation.
- The Neopets Team
For those who missed the introduction yesterday, the project consists of selling 20,000 NFTs (non-fungible tokens) depicting randomly customised and painted Neopets. 500 additional NFTs will be created and reserved for other purposes. You will not be able to feed the NFT Neopet, read to it, play with it, or customise the Neopet further. (What you see, is what you buy.) There are no planned or announced integrations with Neopets.com. If you plan on making a purchase, you will need to set up a digital wallet and convert some money into cryptocurrency.
Here's a sample of what some of the NFTs will look like:
The goal with these types of NFT collectible projects is to purchase them for retail price at time of release, and then either hold onto them indefinitely as a digital collectible or sell them later to those who are willing to pay more for the NFT than you did. As a reminder, the last foray into Neopet crypto collectibles ended with the cards being largely worthless and unsellable. (The marketplace to sell/trade the cards was also shut down.)
Will you be purchasing a Neopet NFT? Let us know in the comments!
