Vanishing Nike-linked NFTs spark panic among collectors

Art linked to tens of thousands of NFTs from the CloneX and Animus collections suddenly disappeared on Thursday leaving owners blindsided.

The cause? A bug with Cloudflare, the service provider creator RTFKT used to host the images for the two collections.

RTFKT is a digital fashion company known for creating virtual sneakers and NFTs. It was acquired by sportswear giant Nike in 2021.

The problem began when Cloudflare moved RTFKT to its free plan before the end of its contract, triggering a bug that cut off the images tied to the NFTs, Samuel Cardillo, RTFKT’s head of technology, said on X.

“Nobody likes to see their content lost, especially due to a mistake made by a cloud provider, and especially when it’s 30,000 plus NFT images,” Phil Mataras, CEO of decentralised cloud network ar.io, which is working with RTFKT to upload the files to its cloud network, told DL News.

Not the first time

The situation was quickly remedied, and the NFT images are back after an hours-long absence.

But it’s something NFT collectors continue to fear.

While NFTs are able to live forever on blockchains, the images associated with them are often just stored on centralised servers. If something happens to the servers, or those who created the NFTs stop paying the hosting fees, the NFT images disappear, defeating the whole purpose of the digital collectibles.

CloneX and Animus aren’t the first time the pictures associated with NFTs have disappeared, but they’re certainly the most high profile case.

The situation is also similar to that at Rally, a once-popular creator platform where influencers, celebrities, and artists issued tokens and NFTs which came with fan perks like exclusive access to music.

Rally shut down in 2023, telling users that the NFTs on the platform would no longer be accessible.

In late 2021, RTFKT launched CloneX, a collection of 20,000 NFT avatars in collaboration with Japanese artist Takashi Murakami.

CloneX NFTs soared in value during the bull market in late 2021 and early 2022. The cheapest NFTs in the collection sold for over $63,000 each at their peak, while rarer examples frequently fetched over a million dollars.

But CloneX, along with much of the NFT market, has been trapped in a drawn-out bear market in recent years.

Animus, a follow up to CloneX, launched in 2022 to limited success.

In December, RTFKT announced it planned to wind down operations. CloneX NFTs now sell for around $300 each.

A more permanent solution

Not all NFTs could potentially disappear like the ones created by RTFKT briefly did.

Some, like the 2017 pixel-art collection CryptoPunks, have all the image data stored with the NFTs onchain. This is possible because the CryptoPunks images consist of small amounts of data — they’re just a 24 by 24 grid of pixels using a limited palette of colours.

NFTs with more detailed images are usually stored on centralised servers, or via decentralised file storage systems like Arweave, which RTFKT chose to move the CloneX and Animus NFT images to after the Cloudflare debacle.

“We acted quickly to prioritise this as the community was frantic,” ar.io’s Mataras said.

Arweave is designed to store data permanently with a one-time payment, using a decentralised network and open ledger system to store data.

“Once uploaded, these images will stay put, forever,” Mataras said.

Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@dlnews.com.