Degen Zoo, an NFT game inspired by YouTuber Logan Paul's controversial Crypto Zoo concept, has more than 115,000 wallets signed up to join the game, with over $700 million pledged. DAO Maker founder Christoph Zaknun took up the challenge to build a variation of his Shelve zoo-themed game in just 30 days.
In August 2021, Logan Paul announced a project called Crypto Zoo, which involves the purchase of non-fungible tokenized eggs that will purportedly hatch into animals, allowing owners to earn passive income through zoo tokens. The project has reportedly raised over $3 million in NFT sales and tens of millions of Zoo tokens. However, the project failed to deliver on schedule, leaving many participants feeling they had been duped by influencers.
Inspired by Paul's Crypto Zoo game, which critics called a "scam," Christoph Zaknun's "Degen Zoo" game simulates the impact of capitalism on animal extinction, featuring deflationary tokens and NFTs of 120 endangered species gather. Players have an incentive to “kill” their NFTs, leading collectibles to extinction and raising awareness of the devastating effects of human greed on wildlife. Zaknun has pledged to donate all Degen Zoo profits to charity.
Zaknun’s decision to update its progress daily sparked the interest of more than 250,000 people, with 3,000 players initiating more than 30,000 testnet transactions within days of the initial testnet launch.
Logan Paul reportedly released a video stating that Christoph Zaknun has no authority over the required development timeline, following criticism that Paul did nothing a year after raising funds for his Crypto Zoo project.
Two months ago, Coffeezilla, a self-proclaimed “Internet sleuth uncovering scams,” released a series of investigations and revelations revealing Logan Paul’s never-before-seen NFT projects. In a YouTube video, investors in the game claim to have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. After Coffeezilla’s video was released, Logan Paul threatened to sue Coffeezilla for defamation after accusing Paul’s CryptoZoo non-fungible token project of being a “scam.” Shortly after, however, Paul deleted the video of his response to Coffeezilla, apologizing and pledging to drop threats of a defamation lawsuit against the video, saying: "It was flippant and not in line with the trust issue at hand, so I called him today and apologized."
Logan Paul and CryptoZoo were hit with a lawsuit last month alleging that the YouTube influencer's "fraudulent enterprise" performed a "carpet pull."
The class-action lawsuit accuses Paul and Crypto Zoo executives of stealing millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency from purchasers through a fraudulent scheme. The lawsuit, filed Feb. 2 in the Western District of Texas, accuses Paul and Crypto Zoo executives of absconding with the funds while promising exclusive access to crypto assets and other benefits.
