By
Temitope Olatunji
April 15th, 2024
After a strong community backlash over very high minting prices and lack of communication, Porsche decided to backpedal its NFT plans.
On Tuesday, January 24, luxury automobile maker Porsche announced that it would be ending its NFT minting program. Based on the classic Porsche 911, the German automobile maker introduced the 7,500-piece NFT collection back in November 2022, created by 3D artist Patrick Vogel.
However, the NFT minting program from Porsche ends within just two days of launch earlier this week on Monday. As minting opened up this Monday, each NFT representing its iconic 911 model was priced at 0.911 Ether (ETH), or about $1,490 each.
Soon after, Porsche faced major criticism from the crypto space for their exorbitant mint price. Some community members also called it an outright cash-grab attempt from Porsche. On Twitter, NFT creators and collectors shared their thoughts while lashing out at Porsche for steering into the Web3 strategy without even considering the current state of the NFT market. In their official announcement on Twitter, Porsche noted:
Our holders have spoken. We’re going to cut our supply and stop the mint to move forward with creating the best experience for an exclusive community. To provide further clarity – Mint is still open and will close tomorrow, Jan 25th at 6am UTC-5. For our holders, we can’t wait to define the future with you.
At the time of writing, from the total of 7500 NFTs available, nearly 1820 have been minted. At the same time, the floor price of the NFT collection has tanked to 0.89 ETH. The NFT market has already faced a slowdown over the last year amid dampening market sentiment. Although Porsche enjoys a good amount of brand equity, the current market conditions don’t favor a roaring launch.
Besides, some people also criticized Porsche for having no active community to communicate with and making available all details only on Twitter.
Brands and NFTs
During the crypto bull run of 2021, a large number of legacy brands jumped on the NFT bandwagon. Companies across different areas of operations, right from financial giants to shoemakers have tried exploring the non-fungible tokens (NFTs) market and have seen different levels of success.
For e.g. shoemaker Nike kickstarted its NFT journey in late 2021 and also entered a deal with a metaverse shoe company RTFKT. This attempt proved profitable for Nike as the company’s NFT token revenue by the summer of 2022 had already reached a staggering $190 million.
However, the adoption of NFTs in the gaming market is still slow. Some players like GameStop launched their NFTs last year and managed a $5 million volume milestone within a week of launch.