Dolce & Gabbana USA Inc. is being sued by a customer who purchased $6,000 in NFTs, including outfits for the Metaverse.
Luke Brown, who filed the lawsuit, claims that the brand misdelivered the NFTs, causing him to lose $5,800 on the NFTs he purchased and reducing their value by 97%. According to Bloomberg, Brown filed the lawsuit on behalf of a class that purchased digital assets from this NFT project.
Dolce & Gabbana allegedly told consumers that by purchasing DGFamily NFTs, they would receive various digital rewards, physical goods, and access to exclusive events. These NFTs were to be traded on the Ethereum cryptocurrency blockchain.
However, according to the complaint filed in Manhattan federal court on May 16, NFT’s delivery was delayed and customers were promised special benefits. But when the digital outfits arrived 20 days later than expected, customers alleged “could be used only in a metaverse platform with barely any users.”
Moreover, even after the digital outfits were released, token holders had to wait another 11 days before they could actually use them. The reason was that Dolce & Gabbana had not obtained prior approval from the Metaverse platform.
The attorneys stated in the complaint, “Their standard operating procedure has been to promise products they fail to deliver, before abandoning a project and community they promised to support.”
The complaint also named UNXD, an NFT marketplace, as a defendant. However, neither Dolce & Gabbana nor UNXD has commented on the situation.
Recently, there has been no shortage of problems and lawsuits involving NFTs. In addition, the NFT market as a whole has been losing attention, and there has been a noticeable decline in transaction volume. For example, the monthly volume of NFT transactions has declined from approximately $17 billion in January 2022 to approximately $600 million in December 2023. This is a situation where many investors are exiting the market after an initial frenzied boom, unable to see any realistic value in the market.
Against this backdrop, the recent lawsuit against Dolce & Gabbana further highlights the concerns and challenges of the NFT industry.