In Brief:
- McDonald’s celebratory NFT Collection, McRib caught in a racial slur controversial.
- Recently, a twitter user discovered a racial slur within an early blockchain Etherscan transaction.
- The transaction appeared to be the Ethereum address associated with the official McRib NFT collection.
It seems McDonald’s celebratory NFT Collection, McRib is caught in a controversial soup.
It all started when a twitter user discovered a racial slur within an early blockchain Etherscan transaction while browsing through the McDonald’s NFT collection’s smart contract. The transaction appeared to be the Ethereum address associated with the official McRib NFT collection with the racial slur inscribed directly on the Ethereum blockchain.
The user discovered some input data which included the racial slur- “ay yo n***a gibsme sum of dat mcrib” in the test transaction that was apparently completed only hours before the launch.
Initially, they were skeptical about the source of their findings not being the real McRib NFT launch. But after checking the launch date, deployer address funding and the deployer address several times, it was in fact found to be from Mcdonald’s smart contract.
In addition to this, one of the ‘owners’ confirmed the OpenSea link after @ok_0s called out the issue.
Many questioned if someone got access to the details, but it would be nearly impossible to find McDonald’s’ contract pre-release. This suggests it was certainly someone within the organisation, however it is not yet confirmed.
However a McDonald’s USA spokesperson commented, “This is deeply offensive language, and it has no place at McDonald’s or in association with our brand. We do not believe, and have found no evidence to suggest, that this hidden message originated from within the company or one of our partners.”
“But as we continue to investigate, we will take appropriate action and will be carefully evaluating any future NFT programs. This bad actor is using the McDonald’s brand to promote a deplorable message that is wholly inconsistent with our values, which is unacceptable,” spokesperson added.
As a part of their US campaign, McDonald’s had reintroduced the McRib to their menu and celebrated the re-launch with a limited edition NFT this November 01. As a result, McDonald’s has been reaching out to winners on Twitter in recent weeks.
