In Brief:
- Political cartoonist Stonetoss’s Flurks NFTs de-platformed from OpenSea and Rarible.
- Stonetoss accused the involved marketplaces of being ‘tools for political censorship’
- OpenSea and Rarible have not yet made any statement regarding this.
Blockchain and cryptocurrencies, one cannot exist without the other. Also, these terms are associated with the decentralized culture which promotes a self-governed and open-to-all approach. In contrast to that, political cartoonist Stonetoss’ Flurks NFTs has been delisted from top-tier NFT marketplaces namely – OpenSea and Rarible. The censorship controversy surrounding the cartoonist and his popular ‘Flurks’ NFTs has raised questions on digital assets’ decentralized nature.
OpenSea and Rarible both have removed a range of NFTs called ‘Flurks’ from the renowned pseudonymous political cartoonist Stonetoss comics. Stonetoss is known for his works mocking woke political culture, such as the “bash the fash”.
Stonetoss tweeted in response to being delisted, accusing NFT marketplaces of acting as a tool for political censorship.
Many cartoonists who came forward in support of Flurks NFT are Ben Garrison, web funnyman Ricky Berwick and the comic Sam Hyde. This weekend, the cartoonist Stonetoss spoke with Bitcoin.com and informed about one of the vital censorship that took place with the new Stonetoss NFT collection.
The Flurks assortment is a collection of 5,000 generative artwork items crafted. Stonetoss released Flurks NFTs on Saturday, which sold out in less than 30 minutes, netting nearly $2 million worth of fees. In an email to OpenSea, Stonetoss described the launch as “wildly successful”, accusing those calling for his blacklisting as acting in bad faith.
Thus far, OpenSea and Rarible have not responded to inquiries about why the Flurks NFTs were delisted.
This month, As opposed to this incident, Pharrell Williams and CXIP launched DAO to protect Artist rights. The aim was to let creators govern and watch over the future of the NFT market instead of other centralized marketplaces such as Opensea and Rarible.
