McDonald’s’ recently released McRib NFT collection seemed to be successful, until now. A Twitter user discovered a racial slur within an early blockchain Etherscan transaction.
The Original Launch of the McDonald’s NFT Collection
To celebrate the company’s 40th anniversary in the United States, McDonald’s reintroduced the McRib to their menu. They celebrated with a limited edition NFT. 10 lucky winners who followed their Twitter and interacted with certain posts by retweeting received NFTs at the time of launch.
This went on at the end of October, going into the start of November. Winners of the tokens have received them within the last couple of weeks.
The launch marked the start of McDonald’s’ NFT collections released in the US, however, they released an exclusive NFT collection for certain employees and customers in China earlier in October.
As a part of their US campaign which involved the NFTs, McRibs were launching back in restaurants for a limited time. This got fans all over the country excited. It had not been made available on the menu consistently in the country since 1989. However, it was made available for promotional purposes some years.
The Discovery of the Racial Slur
Twitter user, @ok_0s recently discovered the racial slur whilst browsing through the multi-billion dollar company’s NFT collection’s smart contract.
At first, they were cautious to the fact that their findings may have not been from the real McRib NFT launch. But after several checks. These included launch date, deployer address funding and the deployer address. The likely reality came out that it was from McDonald’s and the details did in fact match up. Additionally, one of the ‘owners’ confirmed the OpenSea link after @ok_0s reached out.
He discovered in the test transaction completed assumably only hours prior to the launch some input data which included the racial slur. “ay yo n***a gibsme sum of dat mcrib”
Others also questioned whether someone may have got hold of the details in order to access this, but it would be nearly impossible to find McDonald’s’ contract pre-release. This suggests it was definitely someone within the organisation, however it is not confirmed.
Reactions from Twitter
I’m sure the Twitter user shares a reaction with us, both anger and confusion. They said, “I did not expect 2021 to be the year McDonald’s posted a racial slur to the blockchain.”.
He continued by noting “It goes without saying, this is a pretty bad look for a big brand hopping into the space. If you’re a company working on-chain, be careful with who you’re hiring. Make sure someone internally can be on top of everything your brand is putting on-chain.”
McDonald’s’ Future in NFTs
The company are yet to discuss this issue publically, but we may never see them do that. However, it’s a serious issue that could harm the future releases of McDonald’s’ NFT collections.
Why would users purchase NFTs from a company that inscribed a racial slur through the contract in their last release?
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This article is educational material.
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