30s Summary

A group of 36 NFT owners are suing artist Gal Yosef and Eden Gallery for failing to deliver promised benefits from their Meta Eagle Club NFT collection. Club members were to receive exclusive benefits such as entry to art events, luxury rides, and exclusive collectible artwork. Instead, only a few benefits were delivered and a club vote lead to a budget shift away from the original plans. The group accuses the artist and gallery of fraud, unjust enrichment, and violating New York General Business Law, seeking monetary damages and legal orders to stop such conduct.

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A gang of 36 folks who own non-fungible tokens (NFTs), have sued a fancy-schmancy art gallery and an artist who made their NFTs. They reckon the artist didn’t follow through on their promises to build an exclusive club in the virtual world, known as a metaverse, and other cool benefits that were promised.

Back in October, the group filed this complaint in a New York court. They argue Eden Gallery and an artist named Gal Yosef pulled a fast one, basically a trick to scam people.

Gal created an NFT collection called the Meta Eagle Club. It sold 12,000 digital eagle doodles and made 13 million bucks between February 2022 and November 2023.

But the group isn’t happy. They claim the artist and gallery didn’t actually do anything significant to create this Meta Eagle Club for real, even though there were updates claiming this was happening.

According to the lawsuit, the people putting together this project didn’t have a clue about blockchain, smart contracts, or software development. Basically, they had no experience in the stuff they needed to create this club.

NFT owners were promised entry to this Meta Eagle Club and a load of perks. This included entry to art gallery events, hot air balloon rides, rides in private jets, helicopters, and exclusive collectible artwork among other things.

But according to the group, just a few of these awesome experiences were delivered, along with two events and 11 physical pieces of art signed by Gal Yosef.

The real kicker for the group is that a vote was held in January 2023 that changed the direction of the Meta Eagle Club. The decision was to shift the budget away from these original plans due to a dip in market interest.

What’s worse, Gal and Eden Gallery promised there’d be more art and a whole online world, which was supposed to boost the club members’ investment in the club and give them digital assets, almost like dividends.

But the group claim these promises which were supposed to give the NFTs their value were broken. So essentially, they spent way more on these NFTs than they were worth, because their value ended up being a big fat zero.

Eden Gallery and Gal are being taken to task for fraud, unjust enrichment (basically, unfairly taking advantage of the buyers), and breaking New York General Business Law.

The group wants cash damages decided by court, legal orders stopping this kind of behaviour, plus money to cover their lawyers’ fees.

It’s been quiet at Eden Gallery and from Gal, they haven’t responded to requests for a chat about all of these allegations.

Of course, this isn’t the first time buyers of NFTs aren’t happy and are taking legal action. Just proves, whatever you’re buying, even if it’s digital art in the metaverse, buyer beware!

Source: Cointelegraph