Foundation Permanently Shuts Ethereum NFT Marketplace After Sale Process Fails
Founder Kayvon Tehranian said Foundation has shut down its infrastructure after a sale to digital art display company BlackDove collapsed, with no plans to seek another buyer or restart operations.
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Fact Check
The strongest usable evidence is the fetched Defiant article, which directly states that Foundation is shutting down permanently after the BlackDove sale failed and quotes Kayvon Tehranian saying: the goal was to see Foundation live on, that is no longer possible, the infrastructure has already been spun down, and they are not in a position to bring the platform back online. This aligns closely with the user’s statement, including that there are no plans to seek another buyer or restart operations. The Odaily newsflash also points to the same upstream X post, which supports provenance, though the X post itself could not be fetched in this run. Because the best directly validated evidence is a secondary report quoting the primary social post rather than the fetched primary post itself, confidence is medium rather than high.
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Summary
Foundation is permanently shutting down its Ethereum NFT marketplace after a proposed sale to digital art display company BlackDove failed. Founder Kayvon Tehranian announced on X on April 17 that the platform’s infrastructure has already been shut down and said the company will not pursue another buyer. The closure ends a marketplace that handled about $230 million in primary sales.
Terms & Concepts
- Ethereum: A blockchain network that supports smart contracts and hosts many NFT projects and marketplaces.
- NFT marketplace: A platform where non-fungible tokens, or unique blockchain-based digital assets, are created, bought, and sold.
- Primary sales: The first sale of a digital asset by its creator or issuer, before any later resale in secondary markets.