Launched in November 2021, non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace Orica (ORI) billed itself as an “ethical platform” that benefits artists, collectors and charities alike. The organization was involved in prominent projects at the time such as building a school in Uganda to help victims of human trafficking, to help Ukraine.
But less than two years later, the founders of the project have disappeared and the marketplace user interface has gone offline. All that remains are the project’s charitable efforts, which turned out to be genuine, along with allegations from disgruntled users that the developers had orchestrated a back-pull. In a new revelation, co-founder Daniel Zey breaks his long-standing silence by not only denying all allegations and insisting the project has been “hacked,” but also claims the project is still ongoing. Cointelegraph investigates.
An ICO in the middle of the bear market
According to information site Cointotem (Initial Coin Offering), Orica held a fundraiser from August 14 to September 14, 2021. The goal was to raise $3.1 million from the sale of its token, ORI. In its ICO, Orica pledged to earmark 50% of Ori’s total supply for “NFT Marketplace Rewards”. 10% would be provided to “advisors and partners”, 15% to the team and 25% sold to investors. At launch, the price of ORI rose to a peak of $3,638 per coin on August 21, 2021 and then dropped to $0.036 on October 1, 2022, based on data from Livecoinwatch.
The token no longer has any tangible value at the time of publication and the communication channels seem to have gone cold. A former user, who wishes to remain anonymous, told Cointelegraph that “[NFT] marketplace dried up with not enough people using it and then everything went offline very quickly including their website.
Ori price chart. Source: Livecoinwatch.
The philanthropy that survived
In late 2021, the company partnered with Austrian charity project Bbanga to help build a school for children in the Ssese Islands, Uganda. Bbanga commissioned German digital artist Mellowman to release Uganda-inspired digital artwork as NFTs, which would then be sold through Orica’s marketplace. The sale exceeded the $6,500 goal needed to build the school.
Mellowmann <> Bbanga NFT sold at the Orica auction | Source: Orika
A former Orica staff member, who wished to remain anonymous, told Cointelegraph that “the Ugandan school received full payment as it was overseen by Sani, founder of the Bbanga project, who was working with Orica at the time.” The project released a video in June showing that some of the school’s buildings have already been built, including a main hall and library.
The Orica <> Bbanga school in Uganda | Source: Banga
On December 21, 2021, charity group Hope for the Future also announced that it would be selling NFTs on Orica to fund its efforts. Hope for the Future is another non-profit organization based in Austria that helps victims of human trafficking reintegrate into society after being rescued from captivity. The charity continues to operate today. Efforts to help Ukrainian artists were also reflected in the REFUGE campaign which ran in March 2022.
An embroidered NFT “Obra” previously held for sale on Orica | Source: Aline Brant
When asked about this, the former Orica employee said, “All performers are paid in full.” Nearly $30,000 was raised in conjunction with Orica’s efforts to help Ukraine and processed by crypto donation processor The Giving Block. In one of the last statements before going cold, Zey wrote, “We’ve donated 10% of whatever amount we’ve ever made. Our most important product is technology built to give to people.”
And the project that isn’t…
Despite official claims about why the project failed, blockchain data and user complaints suggest irregularities.
On May 11, 2022, the Polygon version of Orica was deployed as part of the BNB Chain migration. This version had a total supply of only 84 million tokens, 16 million less than the original Orica token on BNB Chain. The Polygon version of ORI was a “liquidity generator” token with built-in liquidity provider and swap functions. It had the ability to call contracts on the decentralized exchange, Quickswap, a fork of Uniswap V2 on Polygon.
On June 4, 2022, an Orica Discord server administrator named “Plem” told users that the migration was complete. According to Plem, users had received tokens on the new chain that were equal to the tokens they had on the previous chain.
Orica announces the Polygon migration | Source: Discord
Some users complained that they did not receive their tokens. In response, the admin told them to add the new token contract in Metamask. If they did this and still didn’t see their tokens, they were asked to submit a support ticket.
But the implementer on Polygon didn’t send tokens directly to users who had ORI on BNB. Instead, it transferred ownership to a separate account, which then sold almost the entire supply of the coin through market-making operations. Zey stated that this second account was not controlled by him. Instead, he claimed that a “hacker” stole his key from his deployment and handed it over. The new owner called several liquidity providers and swap functions on Quickswap over the next two months.
Zey did not report this attack until August 11, 2022, exactly one month after it occurred. A member of the team reported that the migration was complete 24 days after the “attack”. On the same day, the new owner transferred an unusually large number of tokens, 23,187,983, to address 0x14dd44e1d3f9a173998c53d75622127ce921ccee. Following this transaction, the new owner continued to place liquidity provider transactions for ORI tokens until they ceased trading on September 11, 2022. In a similar Telegram post dated August 11, 2022, Zey claimed his laptop had been hacked and tokens had been “moved”. directly from the provider.”
On August 12, 2022, Plem announced that the project would “terminate communications” due to a “difficult situation involving a massively uncontrollable token deployment and sale process.”
Orica personnel stated they would cut off communications
In the latest post, users were told to direct messages to Zey if they had any questions, referring to the leader of the team’s blockchain operations. Subsequent messages to the group indicate that Zey has blocked all messages.
Orica’s last post before dark on Discord
Co-founder Danial’s response to a user survey before new posts before archiving the channel | Source: Telegram
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On September 11, 2022, the new owner made a final wire transfer of approximately 150 MATIC ($133.10 at the time) to address 0xfE3fB1d3C9FBF50b6af3A60b5D070dF68D87b99e. This account had previously received 3,463 MATIC ($3,082 at the time) from its new owner. At the time of publication, there are still 9.9 million ORI ($4,341 at the current price) in the account with ownership transferred after deployment.
New revelations from co-founder
Speaking to Cointelegraph on August 17, 2023, Zey denied the back-pulling allegations, stating:
“I think the situation is complex and it is not wise to give information that we may need to recover some of the money. About the carpet pulling part. We had a team of more than 15 people and we paid them up to the final salaries plus we paid for the liquidity, Certik audit and some parts of the development.”
“Our tokens were locked,” Zey said. “On the blockchain, it is also provable that we have had several serious attacks against us. We are a charity project but still got hacked,” he stated, claiming that hacked funds were laundered through cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash, making it impossible was to trace. “The few remaining people who worked without pay, like myself, are still patiently working behind the scenes on this project, but the comeback has to be strong so that we can make amends,” Zey claims.
Zey did not respond to a request for the hash ID of transactions related to the alleged Orica hack.
Of the 12 team members listed in the project’s ICO, five have had their LinkedIn profiles deleted, including Zey, legal counsel Ivan, process manager Karim, IT project manager Pouriya, and business development manager Rilwan. The others, except Zey, were either unreachable or had left Orica by the time it collapsed.
Orica’s founding team became unreachable after last year | Source: Crypto Totem
A mixed legacy
To this day, most of what remains of Orica resides in the bricks and stones of a school in Uganda, and the artists it had aided.
But also left are the token holders who never got a proper explanation why the project had ceased to exist. Despite breaking his silence, Zey has never discussed the reasons for the hiatus, and many questions remain unanswered.
It’s not uncommon to see both investors and co-founders bond around a project as friends and leave as enemies during its collapse. But for Orica, there was at least a brief moment when everything seemed to be working fine.
Cointelegraph editor Zhiyuan Sun contributed to this story.
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