SkyArk Chronicles NFT Project: Popular but Facing False Financing Rumors

Original | Odaily Odaily

Author | Nan Zhi

Editor｜Qin Xiaofeng



Since the official announcement of the start of casting on January 26, the cumulative deposits of the 3A game SkyArk Chronicles' creation NFT sales contract address have exceeded 50,000 ETH, making it one of the most watched NFT projects in the market this year. The popularity is evident.

However, this afternoon Binance Labs issued an announcement refuting the rumors, which pushed SkyArk Chronicles into the whirlpool of false financing. Participants in the public sale began to worry about the project running away and just wanted to get their principal back as soon as possible.

In just three days, SkyArk Chronicles' community reputation plummeted. Tonight, the project team will also announce the list of Bid winners, adding great uncertainty to the future trend. Odaily Odaily has sorted out information related to SkyArk Chronicles for users to make investment decisions.

1. The project is popular and financing information has been refuted

On January 12, SkyArk Chronicles announced the completion of US$15 million in financing, led by Binance Labs.

On January 26, SkyArk officially announced the launch of NFT sales. Among them, the magic book white order is priced at 0.15 ETH, while the public sale and white order will bid in the range of 0.2 ~ 0.6 ETH.

Due to the investment background of Binance and the recent recovery of the NFT market, users have high expectations for the project (looking forward to the token being listed on Binance in the future), and they have chosen to participate in Bid at the top price of 0.6 ETH. As of this morning, in just three days, the amount of deposits in the SkyArk Genesis NFT sales contract address exceeded 50,000 ETH, tentatively reported at 50,928.9 ETH, which is approximately US$115 million.

Just as the community was looking forward to the future of SkyArk, an announcement from Binance Labs shattered the illusion. This afternoon, Binance Labs Fund issued a statement stating that SkyArk Chronicles is a project incubated and invested by Binance Labs through the third phase of the Binance Labs Incubator in 2021. Binance Labs did not participate in the latest round of financing officially announced by the project this year.



Subsequently, SkyArk Chronicles also published an article on the X platform confirming Binance’s announcement. “Binance Labs invested in and incubated SkyArk Chronicles in its third incubator program, its first and only round of funding.”



Moreover, SkyArk Chronicles also deleted the $15 million financing tweet posted on January 12 this year.



The psychedelic operation of the SkyArk project also made community members doubt the authenticity of SkyArk's financing. They believed that there was false propaganda and worried that the project team would simply take the money and run away. “Now I just hope that the project side will not run away and return the winning money.” Some community members also expressed dissatisfaction with Binance Labs’ failure to refute the rumors in time.

In the latest news, Binance Labs issued an article explaining the original intention of refuting the rumors today:

Under normal circumstances, the project party will communicate with us before PR to confirm the release content. This is included in the terms of the investment contract . If the project party does not communicate with us but is realistic and realistic, we will not care. The core problem is that we did not know about the $15 million investment round before the SkyArk Chronicles team PR, and that Binance Labs would be mentioned as leading the investment;

After the SkyArk Chronicles team released the PR, we contacted the project party to delete the correction; today some users came to Binance Labs to confirm the investment information, and we discovered that the project party only deleted the tweet and did not clarify the facts, so Binance Labs made a unilateral clarify.

“The development of a project will not collapse because Binance Labs clarifies the facts; if the prosperity is based on false expectations, it will not be truly brilliant. Judging from the operation and momentum building capabilities of the project side during this period, we can see that this project Fang is optimistic about the potential of C-side users and the community, but hopes that everyone will focus on the product instead of building on the misunderstanding of Binance’s $15 million in investment." Binance Labs said.

In addition, rumors of SkyArk selling its shell are also circulating in the community, saying that the current team of this project has a dark history of Project Rug. SkyArk founder Kelvin said in tonight's AMA that the shelling theory is a rumor. Several founders are located in Singapore and their personal information is public and available for query. Users do not need to worry about refunds and will proceed as planned.

2. The authenticity of US$15 million in financing

After Binance refuted the rumor, the question that the market is most concerned about is whether SkyArk’s claimed “US$15 million in financing” is true or false, and how much is there in it?

SkyArk founder Kelvin responded that there was indeed US$15 million in financing, mainly multiple rounds of currency rights and equity financing. And there has only been one currency rights financing. Binance Labs participated in this round and held the largest share. Binance Labs may have misunderstood that SkyArk conducted currency rights financing again.

According to SkyArk’s deleted announcement, financing participating institutions include Vividthree, GuildFi, Jambo, BreederDAO, LayerZero CEO Bryan Pellegrino, Tangent Ventures co-founder Wangarian and Story Protocol CEO SY Lee.

An investigation by Odaily Odaily found that Vividthree is a listed company in Singapore whose main business includes digital and live experience production and digital media production.

In 2022, VividThree entered the NFT gaming industry by investing in GammaR - subscribing to GammaR's convertible loan of up to US$4.08 million . (Odaily note: A convertible loan is a form of loan that allows the loan holder to convert the loan into stock in the company at some time in the future.) GammaR is a gaming and gamification company founded by Jonathan Zhang (Chinese name Zhang Weiquan , Zhang Weiquan) was founded in 2021. Zhang is also the co-founder and former CEO of SkyArk.



After receiving investment from Vividthree, Zhang served as the company's (deputy) CEO on May 31, 2022, and resigned on November 29, 2023 for unknown reasons.





In short, Vividthree did provide a sum of four million US dollars in funding to GammaR & SkyArk, and VividThree also obtained greater management power at SkyArk - the document stated that during his tenure, Zhang gave up any matters related to GammaR and SkyArk. Discussions, decisions, voting and payment instructions were turned over to VividThree CEO Charles Yeo.

Except for Vividthree, Odaily Odaily has not found any announcements from relevant organizations about investing in SkyArk, which needs further confirmation. Regarding the latest developments of SkyArk, Odaily Odaily will also continue to pay attention.