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Warcraft also understands rug pulls? Official Ballers NFT project token "BALL" rug pulled, crashing 99%

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Warcraft also understands rug pulls? Official Ballers NFT project token "BALL" rug pulled, crashing 99%

NBA basketball superstar "Superman" Dwight Howard, who is highly popular among the Taiwanese people, has been accused by online detective ZachXBT of being involved in a RugPull incident related to his Ballers NFT project token "$BALL", resulting in losses of over hundreds of thousands of dollars for investors.

Warcraft $BALL Token Rug Pull

The "Beast" Howard, who has been selected for the NBA All-Star Game 8 times and named NBA Defensive Player of the Year 3 times, began playing for T1 League Taoyuan Yongfeng Clouded Leopards at the end of 2022 and is still beloved by the Taiwanese people.

However, according to a tweet by ZachXBT, the Beast seems to have been involved in orchestrating a Rug Pull in the cryptocurrency space, making off with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of liquidity.

Dextools data shows that the official NFT project of the Beast, "Ballers" ecosystem token $BALL, plummeted by 99% within 6 hours on the 29th, sparking strong community condemnation.

At the same time, the Ballers NFT Twitter account @BallersAVAX was promptly deleted.

Some users suggested that the Beast's Twitter account may have been hacked and used to disseminate fraudulent token information. However, from the launch of Ballers NFT to the release of the BALL token contract, the Beast continued to post, indicating that the account was still under his control.

What Went Wrong with $BALL?

User Bravenoob21 tweeted that the sale of $BALL tokens had numerous issues and risks, which will be clarified below.

  1. The contract was too simplistic, lacking fair purchase measures such as anti-sniping and maximum purchase limits.
  2. Snipers targeted the token at launch and sold it in batches over the next few hours, including the team selling at the time and making around $40,000 in profit.
  3. The address with the highest profit and the 4th-ranked address are the same entity, as are the 2nd and 5th-ranked addresses, all pointing to a deleted account @shawnzyxrp.
  4. Over 500 addresses sent funds to the final 1 to 3 entities.

AVA Labs Distances Itself

Jake Cvengro, business development lead at Avalanche's development team AVA Labs, emphasized that they have no involvement in the project.

As Zach mentioned, he tagged our name to lend credibility. I reached out to someone who appears to be part of the team via Telegram to verify whether this was a legitimate project or a scam.

He added, "However, before we could have a conversation, he tweeted claiming that the project had AVAX's support."

However, this statement was questioned as an attempt to deflect responsibility, as Avalanche's founder publicly welcomed the Beast to join the Avax ecosystem without reviewing the Beast or his project, expressing condemnation for the Rug Pull incident, or contacting law enforcement to investigate the event.

Ballers NFT Sales Disappoint

Weeks ago, the Beast revealed plans to release a total of 3,000 "Ballers" series NFTs on the Avalanche network, sparking community discussions.

It is reported that due to community skepticism about the potential collectible value of the NFT, despite each NFT's minting price being 2 AVAX, approximately $60 at the time, less than 10% of the series were sold that day.

To attract buyers, the Beast also promised to send 10 AVAX, approximately $300 at the time, to 10 holders for every 100 NFTs minted. Subsequently, he even disclosed that he would airdrop the ecosystem token "$BALL" to all Baller NFT holders.

However, as of today, only 490 Baller NFTs have been minted, about 16.3% of the supply. In addition, the NFT's floor price has dropped to 0.5 AVAX, well below its initial minting price, indicating that their sales strategy has not been successful.

AVA Labs' Accurate Prediction

As community discussions grew, Jake Cvengro had previously publicly stated that AVA Labs had no association with the Beast's Ballers NFT issuance project and kept their distance.

He speculated that the NFT project was proposed by a member of the Beast's team:

We at Ava Labs were not involved in the project, and we only found out about it when his first tweet came out.

He reminded the community, "The days of being able to launch official brand NFTs at will based on having a large number of personal or brand followers are over, and expecting it to succeed is unrealistic."

Every word not only expresses a lack of confidence in Ballers NFT but also seems to foretell the crisis of the project, which has now become reality.