We’re living in a time when crypto enthusiasts will pay the equivalent of millions of dollars for cartoon apes or pixelated punks, when celebrities are changing their profiles to mysterious avatars, when even The Matrix Resurrections has an NFT tie-in. So it made sense in November that when a Twitter account with the handle @CoolKittensNFT announced the launch of an NFT project featuring thousands of drawings of kittens, it quickly picked up buzz. Within weeks, the account grew its presence to more than 20,000 followers through contests and sponsored collaborations with crypto influencers.
Purchasers of “Cool Kittens” NFTs were promised three things: an electronic token with cat art, a purpose-built cryptocurrency called $PURR, and membership in a DAO, or decentralized autonomous organization, a kind of online community in which NFTs—nonfungible tokens—give each member voting power. In theory, a DAO can make decisions to take on projects just like any collective or corporation might; in the case of Cool Kittens, ideas included distributing physical swag and giving money to cat shelters.
It sounded nice. None of it happened.
Less than three weeks after announcing Cool Kittens NFTs on Twitter, “minting” began on the Solana blockchain, and the cats went up for…
