RTFKT NFTs Disappear After Cloudflare Glitch Disrupts Image Hosting

Photographs tied to the favored Ethereum NFT collections Clone X and Animus quickly disappeared on April 24, leaving collectors with clean screens and a discover a couple of phrases of service violation.

The glitch follows the closure of RTFKT, the digital studio behind the collections, which was shut down by Nike in December 2024. While possession and metadata remained safe on the blockchain, the visible belongings linked to the tokens grew to become quickly inaccessible on account of a third-party internet hosting drawback.

RTFKT’s former Head of Expertise, Samuel Cardillo, has since confirmed efforts are underway to stop related disruptions sooner or later.

Why did the NFTs disappear?

The pictures for RTFKT’s Clone X and Animus collections disappeared after Cloudflare downgraded the account chargeable for serving the recordsdata. The downgrade, which Cardillo mentioned occurred just a few days earlier than the paid contract was on account of expire, resulted in restrictions being utilized to the content material.

As a substitute of displaying NFT photos, holders noticed a generic black display with a message indicating that the content material had been restricted for violating Cloudflare’s phrases of service. This occurred as a result of the recordsdata weren’t saved straight on the Ethereum blockchain, however quite hosted off-chain and delivered by Cloudflare’s providers.

While the NFTs themselves have been unaffected—the tokens, metadata, and possession information remained on-chain—the incident highlighted the dangers of counting on centralised internet hosting to show NFT content material.

What’s subsequent for RTFKT?

Though RTFKT as an organization was closed by Nike in late 2024, its collections live on and flow into within the secondary market. To safeguard the media belongings related to these collections, Cardillo announced a migration to Arweave, a decentralised storage community that permits customers to retailer recordsdata completely.

Utilizing AR Drive, a device constructed to interface with Arweave, the workforce plans to maneuver roughly 200GB of picture information by the tip of April. This transition goals to eradicate reliance on providers like Cloudflare and make sure that holders can proceed to view their NFTs no matter third-party service interruptions.

The storage transfer is estimated to price round $2,800 and is meant to offer a extra dependable answer for long-term entry to the digital recordsdata linked to RTFKT’s NFTs.