Does Warcraft Understand Rug Pulls? Official Ballers NFT Project Token “BALL” Crashes 99%

NBA basketball superstar “The Beast” Dwight Howard, who is highly popular among Taiwanese people, has been accused by online detective ZachXBT of being involved in a Rug Pull incident related to his Ballers NFT project token “$BALL”, causing investors to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Table of Contents
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The $BALL Token Rug Pull
What went wrong with $BALL?
AVA Labs distances itself
Poor sales for Ballers NFT
AVA Labs’ successful prediction

Dwight Howard, also known as “The Beast,” who has been selected for the NBA All-Star Game eight times and has been named NBA Defensive Player of the Year three times, has been playing for the T1 League Taoyuan Yongfeng Clouded Leopard since the end of 2022 and is still beloved by Taiwanese people.

However, according to ZachXBT’s tweet, it seems that “The Beast” was involved in planning a Rug Pull in the cryptocurrency field, resulting in the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars in liquidity.

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Data shows that the official NFT project “Ballers” by “The Beast” experienced a 99% drop in its ecological token $BALL within six hours on the 29th, triggering strong condemnation from the community.

At the same time, the Ballers NFT Twitter account @BallersAVAX was immediately deleted.

Some users suggested that “The Beast’s” Twitter account may have been hacked and used to disseminate information about fraudulent tokens. However, “The Beast” has continued to post tweets since the launch of Ballers NFT and the release of the $BALL token contract, indicating that he still owns the account.

User Bravenoob21 tweeted pointing out the numerous problems and risks in the sale of $BALL tokens, which will be clarified one by one.
-The contract is too simple, lacking fair purchase measures such as anti-sniping and maximum purchase limits.
-Snipers conducted sniper attacks at the time of token sale and sold in batches in the following hours. The team also sold and profited approximately $40,000 at that time.
-The address with the highest profit and the fourth-ranking address belong to the same entity, and the second and fifth-ranking addresses also belong to the same entity, which points to deleted accounts.
-User @shawnzyxrp has over 500 addresses and sent funds to the final 1 to 3 entities.

Jake Cvengro, the business development executive of Avalanche’s development team, AVA Labs, emphasized that they have no affiliation with the project.
As Zach said, he tagged our name to appear more credible. I contacted a suspected member of the team internally through Telegram to confirm whether this was a genuine project or just a scam.
He also added, “However, before we could have a conversation, he tweeted claiming that the project was supported by AVAX.”

However, this statement has been questioned as an attempt to shift blame. It is believed that the founder of Avalanche publicly welcomed “The Beast” to join the Avax ecosystem without conducting a review of “The Beast” and his project or expressing condemnation for the Rug Pull incident, or even contacting law enforcement agencies to investigate the incident.

A few weeks ago, “The Beast” revealed news about launching a total of 3,000 “Ballers” series NFTs on the Avalanche network, which sparked discussions in the community.

It is reported that due to skepticism about the potential collectible value of the NFT, although the minting price for each NFT was 2 AVAX (approximately $60 at the time), less than 10% of the series was sold on the same day.

To attract buyers, “The Beast” also promised to send 10 AVAX (approximately $300 at the time) to 10 holders for every 100 NFTs minted. Furthermore, he revealed that he would airdrop the ecological token “$BALL” to all Baller NFT holders.

However, as of today, only 490 Baller NFTs have been minted, which is approximately 16.3% of the supply. In addition, the floor price of the NFT has dropped to 0.5 AVAX, far below its initial minting price, indicating that its sales strategy has not been successful.

As community discussions grew, Jake Cvengro publicly stated at the time that AVA Labs had no involvement with “The Beast’s” Ballers NFT issuance plan and kept their distance from it.

He speculated that the NFT project was proposed by a member of “The Beast’s” team:
We at Ava Labs have not been involved with this project, and we only learned about it when his first tweet came out.

He reminded the community that the days when individuals or brands with a large number of fans could easily launch official brand NFTs are long gone, and expecting it to be successful is unrealistic.

Ava Labs
AVAX
Dwight Howard
Jake Cvengro
“The Beast”

Further reading
Avalanche partners with AWS, AVAX rises by 30%! CEO: It’s a substantial partnership, didn’t pay a dime
Avalanche mainnet activates Banff upgrade, supports Avalanche subnets validators to stake using subnet tokens.