Not Okay Bears NFT Collection took the NFT world by storm for the past day, securing the top spot on OpenSea and LooksRare in mere hours. The collection was delisted off OpenSea and left the NFT community divided. 

Not Okay Bears is an Ethereum-based PFP NFT project launched yesterday, with 1,000 bear caricatures with a variety of random traits. It is a direct copy and paste of the artwork of the original Okay Bears on Solana, rotated so the bears are facing left instead of right.

The ‘knockoff’ or 'parody' Not Okay Bears is a success so far. The project now has a floor price of 0.085 ETH on LooksRare with a trading volume of over 233 ETH. It has sold US$ 6.3 million worth of secondary sales in a day, according to DappRadar.  

Meanwhile, earlier this month, the original Okay Bears is also a collection of 1,000 PFP NFTs released on the Solana Blockchain at the price of 1.5 SOL each) and has become the most actively traded NFT collection on Opensea, surpassing the Bored Ape Yacht Club, Azuki, CloneX. It has generated close to US$ 100 million in trading volume, according to data from CryptoSlam. 

The anonymous creators behind Not Okay Bears donated around 20% of the project’s mint proceeds amounting to 25.8 ETH or US$ 73,000 to crypto charity platform Mental Health Index Fund via the Giving Block. 

A divided community - which camp are on? 

Not Okay Bears are leaving the community divided and stirred up controversy due to its glaring similarity to Okay Bears. For example, Bored Ape Yacht Club owner described the project as ‘everything wrong with this space’, stating that the community should not support a knockoff project made of stolen art. The project is not doxxed and has no roadmap either. 

Other community members are reportedly upset at the OpenSea delisting. They’re questioning OpenSea as to why 0xApes Trilogy and the Bored Ape Solana Club are still thriving on OpenSea while Not Okay Bears is not.

On Twitter, supporters of both Ethereum and Solana have been discussing the project, the two Blockchains and their qualities, joking that Not Okay Bears are ‘Bears on the blockchain that actually works’. 

Plagiarized copies of blue-chip NFT projects are commonplace on Ethereum, prompting some spectators to comment that Solana NFTs being hosted on the larger Ethereum Blockchain indicates the network has come ‘full circle’. 

Photo: Okay Bears/ Not Okay Bears