NFT Startup Backed by MoMA Trustee Shuts Down

Recur, the NFT startup backed by hedge fund billionaire and Museum of Modern Art trustee Steve Cohen, has ceased operations. Thanks to the seemingly everlasting crypto winter, Recur announced in August its intentions to shut down entirely after less than three years of existence, citing “unforeseen challenges and shifts in the business landscape.” The platform, once valued at $333 million after a $50 million infusion from Cohen’s investment fund Digital in 2021, is currently phasing out its site functions until November 16, after which it will go offline.

The startup assisted other companies with custom web3 features such as brand-specific NFTs, game assets, and loyalty programs or membership incentives. Recur also developed a royalties feature for artists and creators to profit from recurring sales of their content regardless of which NFT marketplace facilitated the transaction.

But even Hello Kitty couldn’t salvage the company. Though prominent at its peak with nearly 400,000 minted NFTs and partnering with well-known brands like Sanrio and Emoji, Recur could not withstand the currently flatlining NFT market — and it’s not the only platform to succumb to the current conditions, either. Earlier this year, another NFT platform called Nifty’s phased out and shut down its operations in May due to similar financial concerns, as did Tessera.

At the beginning of the year, several former employees filed a class action lawsuit against Recur after the company carried out two mass layoffs in 2022, shrinking its workforce from 300 employees to less than 100. The suit alleges that Recur violated the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act by failing to provide a 60-day notice of the mass layoffs.

Recur has not responded to Hyperallergic‘s request for comment.

Recur’s users had until August 31 to withdraw their NFTs and cash out any balances from their wallets as the site stopped facilitating primary and secondary sales by then. Any remaining NFTs and their metadata will be moved from the platform to the InterPlanetary File System, a decentralized storage space that keeps the collectibles accessible without Recur.