Nike's RTFKT NFT Artwork Vanishes Due to Cloudflare Error

On Thursday, the artwork associated with multiple Ethereum NFT collections from RTFKT, a company acquired by Nike, disappeared. The issue was traced back to an error by cloud service provider Cloudflare, which was hosting the artwork off-chain. The affected collections included the flagship Clone X profile picture collection, created in collaboration with artist Takashi Murakami, and the Animus collections. Instead of displaying their respective colorful imagery, the NFTs showed a black background with white text stating, “This content has been restricted. Using Cloudflare’s basic service in this manner is a violation of the Terms of Service.”

RTFKT Head of Technology Samuel Cardillo explained that the issue arose due to a Cloudflare contract ending a few days earlier than expected, which triggered the artwork to no longer display as intended. Cardillo mentioned that infrastructure changes had been discussed as early as December when RTFKT was shut down, but delays prevented a formal decision until earlier this month. The storage of images and other data associated with NFTs has been a contentious issue, as many users are unaware that most NFTs do not store all associated data on-chain. This reliance on third-party hosting can compromise the non-fungibility and uniqueness of the tokens.

For instance, an $11 million NFT music album hosted by a central provider went missing after being purchased on Nifty Gateway. Similarly, when crypto exchange FTX collapsed in late 2022, some NFT collections launched via the firm’s platform were broken due to servers no longer being online. While images for RTFKT’s collections began to reappear after Cloudflare purportedly fixed the contract issue, Cardillo is working on getting the files on-chain to prevent future occurrences. He is collaborating with the AR Drive team to decentralize both CloneX and Animus, ensuring that post-April 30, no downtime of the favorite art will ever happen again. AR Drive utilizes Arweave’s decentralized storage network, allowing users to pay once to permanently store their files on-chain. Cardillo estimated that around 200GB worth of files would need to be stored, which would cost around $2,800 via AR Drive.

RTFKT was shut down by Nike in December, three years after the sportswear giant acquired the blockchain fashion and technology company for an undisclosed sum. The incident highlights the risks associated with off-chain storage of NFT data and the importance of decentralized storage solutions to ensure the longevity and integrity of digital assets.