Remember NFTs? Back in 2021 they were the talk of the art world, and big brands wanted in (see our piece on what are NFTs? if you blinked and missed it all). Nike entered the fray when it bought the 'digital shoe company' RTFKT.
But like many gambles during the NFT boom, things didn't work out. Nike's closed the company, and now it's been sued.
RTFKT made virtual sneakers and other items that could be used in metaverse applications. It also worked on physical shoe collections, some linked to NFTs. But Nike announced on the RTFKT X account back in December that it would “wind down RTFKT operations” by the end of January.
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In a class action lawsuit lodged in New York’s Eastern District this week, customers claim they wouldn't have bought Nike NFTs if they knew they were “unregistered securities". According to Reuters, they're demanding unspecified damages of over $5 million for alleged violations of New York, California, Florida and Oregon consumer protection laws.
It appears that since the closure, RTFKT artwork was being maintained by one person, Samuel Cardillo, and that around 30,000 NFTs were wiped due to a service error. A company called Ar.io is now working with the RTFKT team to migrate these NFTs to its Arweave-based ArDrive permanent cloud to make them available for posterity.
CloneX and Animus collections are currently on their way to be decentralized to ArWeave thanks to @ardriveapp (thank you @BramasPaul for the amazing help!) and should be back online, for an infinite amount of time in few hours.For the curious people, here is what happened: -… pic.twitter.com/azInGSHA42April 24, 2025
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Ar.io CEO Phil Mataras says the incident shows the risk of storing things on centralised networks. "Nobody likes to see their content lost - especially due to a mistake made by a cloud provider, and especially when it's 30,000+ NFT images," he said. "Our team is working closely with the RTFKT team to support the migration of the collection through our storage app, ArDrive."
He added: "Once uploaded, these images will stay put, forever."
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NFTs felt like risky territory for a brand like Nike to get involved in. That's not to say the tech doesn't have useful and valuable applications, but there have been so many murky crypto scams, and mass market gimmicks like virtual trainers always seemed like a passing fad.
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Joe is a regular freelance journalist and editor at Creative Bloq. He writes news, features and buying guides and keeps track of the best equipment and software for creatives, from video editing programs to monitors and accessories. A veteran news writer and photographer, he now works as a project manager at the London and Buenos Aires-based design, production and branding agency Hermana Creatives. There he manages a team of designers, photographers and video editors who specialise in producing visual content and design assets for the hospitality sector. He also dances Argentine tango.
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