Metaplex is now being sued by Burwick Law. The umbrella Solana-based NFT platform announced plans to sweep more than $6.5 million worth of unclaimed Solana (SOL) tokens into its treasury. As a possible remedy, the law firm warns that if Metaplex proceeds with the plan, it may be subject to “prolonged litigation.” Burwick Law is asking Metaplex to stop taking this approach and refund the money to NFT holders.
Metaplex found a way to reduce the onchain storage required for certain NFTs. Current Metaplex Token Metadata (TM) NFT holders got a deadline of April 25th. During this deployment window, they will need to go through and perform a resize optimization on all TM accounts. Instead, the company agreed to automatically send any excess SOL to the Metaplex DAO. This move will penalize the accounts that did not make a voluntary effort to meet the deadline.
The unclaimed SOL may be used for airdrops, grants to ecosystem builders, or other initiatives voted on by the DAO. According to Burwick Law, this plan leaves more than 54,000 SOL tokens in jeopardy. According to Metaplex’s claim website, only 7,043 SOL have been claimed so far.
Burwick Law, representing many of the NFT collectors who said they had “serious, deeply held concerns” about the plan, has publicly lambasted Metaplex’s plans. The firm says in its rebuttal that the firm’s plan “erodes trust” and “violates the spirit of crypto.”
Many minters never received clear notice that these lamports could be swept, let alone diverted to a treasury they do not control. - Burwick
Burwick Law urges Metaplex to halt the proposal now, and begin providing direct refunds of rent to current holders of NFTs. The company recommends keeping a “modest” 10%-network-maintenance bounty.
Update, 12:30pm ET: As of publication, Metaplex had not yet responded to Burwick’s criticism on X.
