How The Cereal Club NFT Mint Became A Total Disaster

The Cereal Club NFT collection’s public mint was a total disaster! The team paused the minting and explained on Twitter that they are just “fixing a site fetch issue.” However, the community didn’t buy the explanation and accused the project of pausing the auction to manipulate the OpenSea floor price and induce more FOMO.

The Cereal Club NFT is a collection of cereal-inspired digital artwork. In terms of vibe and look, the most straightforward description is that it looks like Doodles NFTs with a cereal bowl as its head. The team really wanted to be playful because the cereal bowl pays homage to a simpler time in our lives as kids enjoying the comfort food while watching cartoons.

The Cereal Club NFT Public Mint

With over 143,000 followers on Twitter, the Cereal Club NFT collection is undoubtedly one of the most hyped projects in the space. Unfortunately, the public minting didn’t live up to the expectations of the NFT community. In contrast to its fun and playful vibe, the minting turned out to be another NFT space horror story leaving trusting NFT collectors disappointed.

The team announced that they would do a Dutch-style auction starting at 1 ETH. This style considers all bids before arriving at a ceiling price. Then, it gradually drops at specific time intervals. By practice, high-demand NFTs start at 1 ETH and lower 0.1 ETH every 10 minutes until people start buying the NFTs.

This is where the auction took an ugly turn! The community started to FUD on Discord. In effect, the team changed the price to 0.5 ETH, a big dive from the original price range. Then, the floor began to drop drastically. The team responded by pausing the auction and lowering the price to 0.35 ETH. This move raised many questions, mainly why there were issues on the mint when the smart contract was supposedly locked out.

As of press time, the floor price on OpenSea is just 0.198 ETH or $595 — a far cry from the community’s expectation. The leading sentiment is that the team is just waiting for floor price to rise in the hopes of people minting at a higher price. There are also speculations that they are fake-buying NFTs in order to drive up the floor price.

On top of this frustrating situation, the project is allegedly on a banning spree on Discord. Early supporters are dismayed that the team is treating those who propped the projects for weeks this way!

Let’s Talk About the Red Flags

Days before the public mint, NFT thought leaders started pointing out the red flags about the project. NFT Ethics, a Twitter account aiming to deliver legitimacy and scrutiny of NFT collections, tagged the project as an NFT scam!

According to the thread, the team behind the project is associated with another controversial project, Squiggles. NFT Ethics also pointed out that the extremely high mint price of 0.5 ETH would, at worst, net the team $11 Million. So the team can pocket a huge sum on primary sales alone.

Furthermore, the team is completely anonymous, so in case of a rug pull or scam, no one would be accountable. NFT Ethics also called out the project for not having a real roadmap. They also claimed support from Venture Capital and Fortune 500 Companies with zero evidence.

Tune in to the project’s Twitter page for fresh updates!