Users of the NFT platform RTFKT have filed a lawsuit against Nike, accusing the company of a "rug pull" — the deliberate shutdown of the platform for financial gain. The lawsuit claims the company used its reputation to promote the tokens and then abandoned investors with devalued assets.
What Is Known
On April 25, a class action lawsuit was filed in federal court in Brooklyn by a group of RTFKT users led by Jagdeep Cheema. They claim to have suffered significant losses after Nike shut down RTFKT in January 2025, despite previously actively promoting its NFTs.
The plaintiffs argue that Nike sold unregistered securities, violating consumer protection laws and several regulations regarding unfair competition. The lawsuit states that the value of the tokens was directly tied to Nike's efforts to develop the project, and investors expected their value to increase.
The group is seeking $5 million in damages, asserting that Nike attracted buyers by promising opportunities for trading tokens and participating in special reward missions. After the platform’s closure, users lost access to these activities, and the value of the NFTs plummeted.
The Controversial Status of NFTs
U.S. courts have yet to make a definitive ruling on whether NFTs constitute securities. However, the plaintiffs emphasize that the legal classification of the tokens is not necessary for the lawsuit to succeed.
Previously, David Sacks, the "crypto czar" under the Donald Trump administration, proposed classifying NFTs and memecoins as "collectible assets."
Investor Losses
After the launch on April 18, 2022, the average price of Nike’s NFTs was around 3.5 ETH, or $8,000 at that time. By April 21, 2025, their value on OpenSea had fallen to 0.009 ETH, or approximately $16.
The value of specific collections, such as RTFKT Project Animus, fell by 41.6% in the past 24 hours to 0.007 ETH.
The shutdown of RTFKT occurred amid a general downturn in the market. In the first quarter of 2025, NFT sales volume dropped by 85%.
Issues With CloneX
Additional pressure on token holders' sentiment may have come from a recent disruption in displaying the CloneX collection — one of the most famous created by RTFKT. Instead of images, users saw a message about a violation of Cloudflare’s terms of service, which restricted access due to improper use of the free tier for media file storage.
To address the issue, RTFKT’s Chief Technology Officer Samuel Cardillo announced the migration of all CloneX data to the decentralized storage platform ArWeave. After the migration was completed, the artworks were successfully restored. However, the incident may have been enough to exacerbate investor concerns about the project’s future.
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