Niftys.com free NFT giveaway went off, with a hitch
Today on Twitter it was hard to ignore the fact that "FREE NFT" was trending in the United States.
This NFT is part of a giveaway by Niftys.com a new entrant to the NFT space that bills itself as "the ultimate destination for NFT creators, collectors, and curators" offered a free NFT to anyone who signs up today.
The problem, if you did try to sign up today, well things might not have gone as expected. For me personally, I went through the signup flow and then landed on a page that looked like this:
Scrolling around the page I tried to click on anything that looked like it was meant to be a button but nothing happened. Then the page disappeared and I was taken back to the account creation page.
This started what seemed to be an endless loop where I would enter my name, username, bio, and profile pict and then, well, I'd be taken right back to the onboarding page. Well it looks like I wasn't alone as Twitter is now full of people sharing similar experiences trying to get started with Niftys...
After switching to Safari I was able to get my account to load so I hit the button to claim my free NFT and now it seems to be in some sort of "pending" status.
I thought I would try my luck at buying an NFT which you can do for $2.99, and well, it took my money but I don't see any NFTs in my account. Apparently if I share on Twitter I can get another NFT so maybe a third time will be a charm and I'll end up with an NFT at the end of the day?
Like most projects with a buggy launch there's a good chance the team will claim "demand was much bigger than we expected" turning their technical issues instead into a flex for how cool their project is.
Now all this being said, Niftys did raise $10M from backers like Coinbase Ventures, Dapper Labs, Forerunner Ventures and more so I'm not claiming this is some fly by night operation. With a major media partnership with Warner Bros I'm guessing they'll get past the day one calamities and be just fine. Personally, I'm a big fan of a lot of their investors so clearly the founders impressed a lot of people that are expecting them to execute on their vision.
Nifty's put out a press release today, and honestly, this paragraph just doesn't make any sense. Sorry, I don't mean to be harsh but this is almost humorous given how clunky and hard to use the site is:
The robust Nifty's platform enables visitors to enjoy a seamless experience that is easy and intuitive to navigate – even for tech novices. The emphasis on accessibility is rooted in Nifty's belief that digital collectibles should be available for everyone to discover, share and enjoy and that technological and economic barriers to engagement should be eliminated. (Source - PRNewsWire)
I saw some of the most tech savvy NFT investors struggle to get a single NFT from the platform so I'm not quite sure there's a robust, easy, and intuitive to navigate experience even for tech novices...yet.
All that being said, I don't mean to be overly harsh. Honestly, this seems like a cool idea, and the founders clearly have done a great job getting a major media partner and some serious investors onboard. My guess is they'll learn a lot from what went wrong today, as well as what went right as I'm sure a lot of good things also happened today, I just didn't get to experience them.
Personally I'm looking forward to where Niftys goes with the platform and I'm looking forward to getting to see it in action once everything is working as expected.