THE GRAVEYARDretailtoken.ai
Dead Retail

eBay KnownOrigin

Acquired in June, dismantled by the second February.

eBay acquired the Manchester-based NFT art marketplace KnownOrigin in June 2022 as its entry into web3. In February 2024 it cut around 30% of the team. On 17 July 2024 KnownOrigin announced it was winding down its on-chain marketplace and minter, citing changes in the market, as eBay redirected attention to AI and live shopping. Because everything had been minted on Ethereum, existing tokens kept working and remained tradeable elsewhere — which is the whole argument for on-chain issuance, demonstrated by its operator giving up.

Timeline

  • June 2022 Launched
  • 17 July 2024 Ending announced
  • July 2024 Wound down two years after acquisition; team laid off

Ran for 2y 1m.

On-chain now

No single contract

This was a platform or marketplace rather than one collection, so there is no canonical address to record. Rather than pick one and imply it stands for the whole thing, the field is left empty.

Sources

3

Every claim above traces to one of these. Where a company or regulator said it themselves, that is marked primary.

  1. KnownOrigin announced on 17 July 2024 that it would wind down its on-chain marketplace and minter nft now · July 2024
  2. eBay cut roughly 30% of KnownOrigin staff in February 2024, ahead of the closure Shopifreaks · July 2024
  3. Existing tokens retained functionality and remained tradeable on other marketplaces after closure Value Added Resource · July 2024