NFT Art Disappears, Cloudflare Blamed: A Temporary Glitch or a Sign of Things to Come?
Vanished Artwork: Unexplained Absence of RTFKT and Nike's Ethereum-Based NFT Creations.
In a twist for digital art collectors, images from Nike-owned RTFKT NFT collections mysteriously vanished from view early Thursday. The culprit? Allegedly, an error by cloud service provider Cloudflare, as the art is stored off-chain.
If you've been following the art, fashion, and NFT game, you'll know that RTFKT, now defunct, was acquired by Nike back in 2022.amous pieces like the Clone X profile picture collection, a collaboration with celebrated artist Takashi Murakami, and its Animus collections, stopped displaying their vivid imagery, replaced instead with a generic black background and white text that read, "This content has been restricted." The message suggested a violation of Cloudflare's Terms of Service.
As NFT collectors on Twitter couldn't help but notice and poke fun at the incident, RTFKT Head of Technology Samuel Cardillo stepped up to explain the situation. He stated that the problem arose due to a Cloudflare contract ending a few days prematurely, resulting in the artwork no longer showing as intended on the Ethereum NFTs.
This isn’t the first time storage of NFT art and data has been under the microscope. Many users are often unaware that very few NFTs store all associated data, like images and metadata, on-chain alongside the tokens themselves. When data isn't stored on-chain, projects are left reliant on third-parties to continue hosting and displaying the data.
Take, for instance, an $11 million NFT music album purchased on Nifty Gateway and subsequently went missing for a time after the purchase. Or when the crypto exchange FTX collapsed in late 2022, NFT collections launched via the platform were broken due to servers being offline.
Thankfully, art for RTFKT's collections began to reappear after Cloudflare purportedly fixed the contract issue. However, Cardillo is working on getting the files on-chain to avoid a repeat performance. He's collaborating with AR Drive, an open-source app that uses Arweave's popular decentralized storage network, to ensure this never happens again.
According to Cardillo, a cost of around $2,800 would be needed to store around 200GB worth of files using AR Drive's decentralized storage network. With decentralized storage solutions like AR Drive, data is distributed across multiple nodes rather than relying on a centralized service, making the art more resilient and less susceptible to disruptions.
RTFKT's closure in December 2022 by Nike, three years after the acquisition, might have come as a surprise to some, especially considering the sharp drops in the value of its NFT collections. Neither Nike nor Cloudflare immediately responded to requests for comment.
Is this a brief glitch or a sign of things to come? Perhaps it's a call to reconsider our approach to NFT art storage, making it more resilient and less susceptible to disruptions. Either way, keep your eyes on the NFT art world, as the tech continues to evolve and change the way we view and enjoy digital art.
- The vanished NFT images from RTFKT collections, known for their vibrant art like the Clone X profile picture collection and Animus collections, were replaced with a generic black background and white text.
- The culprit, allegedly, was an error by cloud service provider Cloudflare, as the art was stored off-chain, not on the blockchain.
- In an effort to explain the situation, RTFKT Head of Technology Samuel Cardillo mentioned that the problem arose due to a Cloudflare contract ending a few days prematurely.
- Cardillo is now working on getting the files on-chain to avoid a repeat performance, collaborating with AR Drive, an open-source app that uses Arweave's popular decentralized storage network.
- With decentralized storage solutions like AR Drive, data is distributed across multiple nodes rather than relying on a centralized service, making the art more resilient and less susceptible to disruptions.
- The cost of storing around 200GB worth of files using AR Drive's decentralized storage network is approximately $2,800.
- The closure of RTFKT by Nike in December 2022, three years after the acquisition, might have come as a surprise to some, especially given the sharp drops in the value of its NFT collections.
- This incident could serve as a call to reconsider our approach to NFT art storage, making it more resilient and less susceptible to disruptions, as the tech continues to evolve and change the way we view and enjoy digital art, extending even to lifestyle sectors like fashion-and-beauty and technology.
