The NFT startup Recur said Friday that its Web3 platform is winding down — unable to weather the chills of the crypto winter, despite hosting the IP of several big brands like Hello Kitty and Nickelodeon.
In the coming months, Recur’s platform will steadily lose its core features, the company said in a blog post. That includes the ability for users to withdraw NFTs from Recur, redeem stablecoin balances, and trade collectibles on Recur-hosted marketplaces.
“This decision has not been easy,” the company said on Twitter, citing “unforeseen challenges and shifts in the business landscape.”
Recur’s announcement reflects the recent headwinds in the NFT space as companies navigate a downturn in the popularity of digital collectibles. Last July, Recur started a “jet-setting NFT experiencewith Hello Kitty and Friends, only for his ambitions to be dashed a little over a year later.
That same July, Recur noted there was an “unprecedented demand” for the TV packages it contained profile picture (PFP) NFTs of Nickelodeon characters like Tommy Pickles from ‘Rugrats’. Package openings will be turned off in November, Recur said Friday.
Founded in 2021, Recur marketed itself as a company that offers Web3 “building blocks” to other companies. The platform could be used to create in-game assets, loyalty programs and digital collectibles using NFTs, according to the website.
Recur’s move comes not long after Nifty’s, a social network turned Web3 creator portal, also said it was to block. Nifty’s had also secured well-known media titles as partners, such as ‘The Matrix’ and ‘Game of Thrones’.
With more than 380,000 NFTs minted through Recur, the company said it has changes in store to ensure several digital collectibles will live on.
Recur said metadata and media for its NFTs will be migrated to the Interplanetary File System (IPFS), a peer-to-peer file sharing network built by Protocol Labs. Other assets are hosted on Filecoin‘s network, Recur added.
In December 2021, Recur offered a Recur Pass during a limited 24-hour sales period. Sold as an NFT before $300the pass can be resold and offers holders early access to future NFT drops, among other things.
Last February, a Recur Pass sold for $88,888, To repeat said a statement on Twitter. Today the cheapest Recur Pass listed on OpenSea is currently asking for 0.001 ETH (about $1.69).
At the end of 2021, Recur said it was valued at $333 million after becoming a $50 million Series A funding round. The round was led by Digital, an investment fund backed by the family office of New York Mets majority owner and billionaire hedge fund manager Steve Cohen.
Other notable names had participated in a $5 million funding round earlier that year, such as investor and NFT creator Gary Vaynerchuk, Gemini’s Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, and Ethereum co-founder and ConsenSys founder Joe Lubin. (Disclosure: ConsenSys is funding an editorial independent Decrypt.)