Milking the Birds

Moonbirds is one of the most successful NFT projects in history, having made around $330 million sales in the few weeks since mint, netting Carson a healthy profit in the process. To say that NFT Twitter is furious would be an understatement.

A controversial launch

The Moonbirds launch was already dogged by talk of insider trading and value sniping. Carson was accused of using insider knowledge to scoop birds with the rarest traits before rarity counts were made public. He grabbed all of his tokens in the days before Moonbirds’ price exploded: his stash is now worth around $580,000. At the very least, the optics are terrible and it looks as though Carson extracted all the value he could and then took flight (no pun intended) with a suitcase full of money.

Those funds will no doubt come in handy as he establishes his new NFT fund: 1.21 Gigawatt. The fund has lofty ambitions that won’t come cheap, including commissioning the best 1/1 artists to create new work, buying up historically significant NFTs and securing allow list spots on the most promising collections. The website goes fully live in May but it’s already accepting applications to invest. At the time of writing, 99 spots were up for grabs.

Not that many Moonbird collectors will be hurrying to join Carson on his newest venture. Kevin Rose (the project founder) admitted that buying Moonbirds before rarity counts were made public broke internal policy, but claimed that there was nothing he could do about it. He promised to tighten protocols for future drops. Carson also received continual criticism for tweeting Moonbirds price predictions (something usually avoided by teams as it’s seen as financial advice).

Widespread outrage

To many, it looks like Carson used Moonbirds to fund his next, rival project and acted in extremely bad faith. That's certainly the conclusion that most of Twitter have leapt to. Along with suspicious new wallets and accusations of price pumping, this story adds to the cloud that hangs over Moonbirds. Despite being one of the biggest launches in NFT history, it can’t seem to quite shake off these negative stories.

For his part, Carson pushes an entirely different narrative. He claims in a series of tweets that he only left Proof when it became obvious that the company was going to be large. With no experience running big companies, he felt compelled to exit. Family commitments also played their part, as did a desire to give 100% of his attention to 1.21 Gigawatt. Unsurprisingly, he also denied minting until rarity was widely known.

Carson's new fund has so far raised $12 million in hard commitments and another $46 million in soft. This would seem to be a big conflict of interest and split loyalty. Moonbirds collectors have also been left wondering why Carson would go to work elsewhere when the community had put its trust in him to build for their futures. Moonbirds has variously benefited from extraordinary levels of hype, access and trust - the latter of which now seems heavily eroded.

Although Carson’s CV looks impressive, his track record isn’t stellar. His time at online coding class company Treehouse left a bad taste as large numbers of employees were laid off. One Twitter user even predicted (two days in advance) that Carson would ditch Moonbirds. The prevailing opinion on NFT Twitter is that this was his plan all along; to acquire as many rare Moonbirds as possible, pump the project and then walk away. Incidentally, the website for 1.21 Gigawatt was a rushed job, to say the least - knocked up in under 12 hours after a Twitter appeal.

Moonbirds continue to soar

Bad publicity around Moonbirds hasn’t been enough to drown out the hype. The price did dip by 25% immediately after Carson announced his departure, but it’s since begun to rally. Some have defended the project and even suggested that Carson’s actions might be a good thing since they’ll improve protocol around future drops and Proof will learn from events. 

For now, the project seems unstoppable and the team looks to the future. Their Twitter is awash with Spaces discussing the next developments and job openings as Proof expands. The remaining members will hope that this story quickly fades from the news cycle. Judging by Moonbirds' sheer clout in the NFT space, that might well turn out to be the case. 

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