The Cock Foster twins have been running the NFT marketplace for the past five years.
Duncan Cock Foster and Griffin Cock Foster, co-founders of the nonfungible token (NFT) auction platform Nifty Gateway, posted on Twitter on January 25 that they were leaving the company immediately. Duncan defended their choice by saying, “Griffin and I are founders at heart, and we want to start another company.”
Gemini, the company that owns Nifty Gateway, and Genesis Global, a cryptocurrency lender that went out of business, are in a legal battle over this. Gemini says that Genesis Global owes its users $900 million as part of the Gemini Earn program. This is because Genesis Global stopped withdrawals in November 2020 because of “unprecedented market conditions.”
Some news — after almost 4 years, @gcockfoster and I are departing @gemini and are passing the baton at @niftygateway.
— duncancockfoster.eth | Nifty Gateway (@dccockfoster) January 25, 2023
This journey has been an incredible ride, but Griffin and I are founders at heart and we want to start another company.w/ some thoughts below:
The brothers do not know when their last day at the firm will be, but Duncan stated that the twins had always intended to leave the company when Gemini acquired it years ago.
Eddie Ma (@xlma1508) will take over as technical leader for Nifty, and Tara Harris (@tara_harris__) will be the leader for non-tech.
— duncancockfoster.eth | Nifty Gateway (@dccockfoster) January 25, 2023
When we got acquired, NG was just Griffin and I, and it is a great feeling to be leaving a large robust team in place to continue our efforts.
Gemini is having trouble with crypto lending firm Genesis, which filed for bankruptcy last week. This is why the twins are leaving. The exchange wants to get back the $900 million in assets that the lender owes it.
Genesis and Gemini stopped redemptions in November of last year, putting an end to their partnership on the Genesis Earn program, which gave consumers up to 7.4% interest on crypto holdings.
The Winklevoss twins’ exchange threatened to sue Genesis’ parent firm, Digital Currency Group (DCG), and CEO Barry Silbert last week if a payment plan could not be established.
A day after Gemini Earn was terminated, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed charges against both Genesis and Gemini, saying that the Earn product is an unregistered security and that both businesses violated securities law.
Nifty Gateway has been changed
Over time, Nifty Gateway has changed in order to stand out from competitors like OpenSea and LooksRare. Nifty Gateway started out as a market for curated NFT collections, but as generative art like PFPs became more popular, it changed into something else.
In October last year, Nifty Gateway pivoted from a standalone NFT marketplace to an aggregator of Ethereum NFTs. The following month, a change to the marketplace’s infrastructure was announced that aimed to reduce gas fees by as much as 70%. Gas fees are the cost of conducting transactions on the Ethereum blockchain.