SHHAN, the Black Cats NFT collection artist, accused of racism
According to recent reports, SHHAN, the Non-Fungible Token (NFT) artist behind the popular collection Black Cats, is being accused of racism. Allegedly, SHHAN blocked Chinese written posts on the community’s social media pages.
SHHAN wanted the community to use English to reach American markets
SHHAN, the NFT creator from South Korea, was restricting Chinese-language posts on community social pages. The artist recently announced the reason for this, citing users’ complaints about the discriminative move. However, the NFT artist responded with a Chinese post.
In a statement, the artist argued that he had earlier revealed on social pages (Discord and Twitter) that the team is trying to reach out to North American markets. The vast majority of individuals, however, didn’t adhere to it. In this case, the NFT creator urged supporters to utilize English when responding to the Twitter post. SHHAN believes this approach will set their creations skyrocketing to the moon:
“It is because I previously announced on Twitter and Discord that my team is trying to enter the North American market. Therefore, I recommended everyone to use English when responding to Twitter posts. Why do this? Because when I spoke with North American holders [of our NFTs], they told us comments on the Mimic Twitter page are almost exclusively in Chinese, so it was very hard for them to feel the culture of the Mimic community.”
SHHAN is regarded as the maker of the Mimic Shhans collection of black cat NFTs. The 10,000 Profile Picture (PFP) NFTs, created on the Ethereum blockchain, represent cunning “mimicking black cats” with diverse masks. Every Mimic Shhan has unique outfits, facial expressions, and equipment.
A Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license governs the collection’s use. According to this, anyone could use it for personal or business purposes. On October 14, 2022, the ERC-1155 contract that was in place was replaced with the ERC-721 contract. As a result, the collection that is currently in use, the Mimic Shhans collection, was moved to the ERC-721 contract.
SHHAN’s artwork is deeply appreciated in China
Remarkably, KEY3.id, a decentralized naming system built on the Ethereum blockchain, initiated a blue-chip NFT-obligated domain registration voting campaign on December 5. That caused quite a stir within the NFT community. After four days of stiff competition, the Mimic Shhans community wins with 1059 votes.
Additionally, SHHAN stated that China is the country where the catalog is most well-liked. From its very launch, the initiative has bartered 285 Ether (ETH) and reportedly has 2,001 holders on OpenSea. The artist then reaffirmed his opinion that the consumer markets in Europe and North America were crucial for the upcoming Shhan Metaverse. That is why he asked users to use “more internationalized English.”
That is yet another incident where users proclaim allegations in the NFT ecosphere. For instance, movie star Elijah Wood sold a collection of NFTs he held after allegations surfaced that the creator underneath them had generated racist representations of marginalized groups in previous work.
