Racist NFT Creators At It Again: ‘Meta Slave’ Project Rebrands After Being Called Racist

As the non-fungible token (NFT) cryptocurrency continues to grow and expand – it has left room for racism. From NFTs depicting George Floyd as “Floydies,” to more recently a project by the name of “Meta Slave” which featured images of Black people – questions on whether it’s being regulated enough have risen.

The “Meta Slave” collection included thousands of NFTs which had a Black face, priced around 0.01 ETH, and simply named “META SLAVE” and an assigned number.

The faces had the hallmarks of being algorithmically generated, such as surreally malformed accessories and teeth, according to Vice.

After the collection was forced to rebrand after widespread and justified backlash, the project did not shut down, instead, it has merely rebranded to also feature “white, Asian, etc.” NFTs.  

The account pivoted on January 31st and said that “everyone is a slave to something” in an effort to defend its actions.

But then within a few hours – the account backtracked and said: “We apologize to those who have been offended by our project but we are here only with good intentions. Peace to all.” Shortly after, the Twitter account announced they would be rebranding the collection to “META HUMAN’S[sic]” on Twitter and on OpenSea. 

The collection, since removed on OpenSea, contained 1,865 NFTs―a reference to the year the Constitution was amended to abolish slavery, reported Vice.

According to OpenSea, the collection was created by someone going by “Unipic” who at one point, according to their bio, used the now-defunct Twitter handle @UniqueFractal.

The story gets even weirder because the collection was allegedly started in the hope of supporting Black Lives Matter.

“Hi, there! We are glad to inform you that we have launched the first sales of NFT META SLAVE,” read the announcement of the project via Twitter. “This project was inspired by Black Lives Matter and also in honor of George Floyd.”

The project hasn’t been very successful – it’s sold 4 NFTs to 2 addresses thus far, amassing .04 ETH in volume, or $117 at today’s price. 

This is obviously not the first time something like this has happened.

In December, the  FloydiesNFT project was created in a bid to sell collections featuring illustrations of George Floyd in what was clearly a shameless attempt to troll.

The project was removed from OpenSea but a page still exists there directing buyers elsewhere.