Do you think almost all NFT projects were rugpulls?

Yes, there are a lot of scams and a lot of people with bad intentions, but nowadays people can call almost anything a rug pull. I would like to offer a different perspective and am curious about your opinions.

I think there are many cases where the creators had good intentions, but couldn’t live up to their promises.

They made a lot of money right away and then started working on the roadmap.

But it’s difficult work and they have to sustain hype, which is hard (even impossible maybe under current market conditions).

And they see that many holders are treating it like a casino and want to get rich fast, instead of believing in what they’re building. So there is a lot of fud and impatience.

Next, they might not see any more money coming in, so now they have to keep working just because they believe one day it will pay off again.

Or they want to do the right thing and keep working for free to satisfy the holders because they already paid them. But the problem with that last one is that it might not help the holders either if the hype is gone and prices are sinking anyway, even when they try their best.

Also, some made millions and were able to retire, but many maybe made between a few thousand or a few hundred thousand. They needed to pay their bills while working on their project. Maybe they re-invested some in the project, and maybe they lost some by holding earnings in ETH instead of fiat, so money might have run out and they had to return to a day job again.

Sure, some were scammers from the get go, but my opinion is that it was always a gamble.

Some creators just oversold their confidence that it would work out, which is what’s needed to get people to invest. Or maybe they really were overconfident themselves.

Can you call that a rugpull? Yeah, maybe. But maybe it didn’t necessarily always start with that intention and instead just failed.