Big Daddy Ape Club was billed as a collection of 2222 ape-themed NFTs to be minted on the Solana blockchain and listed on the Solanart NFT marketplace. On January 11, scammers pulled off one of the largest NFT rug pulls in the history of the Solana blockchain. The scammers made off with 9,136 SOL, or around $1.3 million at the time, in funds sent by would-be collectors to mint “Big Daddy Ape Club” NFTs—except there were no NFTs. And the people behind the Big Daddy Ape Club were able to abscond with the funds despite the NFT drop having been “verified” by decentralized identity verification company Civic. In the CIvic Pass program, the identity of the individual who held themselves out as the founder of the BDAC project was verified through our program. Specifically, the Verified by Civic Pass program works by verifying control of the project's Twitter handle, control of the project's domain, and identity verification of the project founders through ID document capture. The verification process also includes a 3D face scan of the person completing verification compared to a 2D photo identification. But it appears being fully doxed wasn't enough to keep the Big Daddy Ape Club developers from scamming collectors.

According, CIvic is working with law enforcement to assist in their investigation, but do not know how long their investigation will take.