EtherRock NFTs are now worth millions, but are they the originals?

The cheapest EtherRock—an NFT illustration of a rock— was worth about $100,000 two weeks ago. As of Thursday, the cheapest rock was worth 730 ETH or more than $2 million, according to the Twitter account @etherrockprice, which tracks its prices. The new price is up significantly from the Tuesday price floor of $1.3 million.

EtherRocks, of which only 100 will ever exist, are now seen partly as an investment but also as a sign of status in online crypto and NFT communities.

Meltem Demirors, the chief strategy officer of CoinShares Group and the owner of a gray EtherRock she named “Grug,” said what started as an absurd historical NFT has taken on a different meaning.

Courtesy of Meltem Demirors

“What are the markers of taste and insider status? It could be driving an expensive car; you could go to a club and get an expensive table and buy a lot of bottles; or in my world, you could buy a digital rock,” Demirors said.

She said she bought her rock earlier in August for about nine Ether, or around $25,000 at the time, after seeing them mentioned on her Twitter feed. At first, she looked at the NFTs as ridiculous and hilarious, but soon wanted in on the trend.

“I think of rocks and these vintage NFTs as like owning a piece of crypto history,” she said.

Today, she estimates her rock is worth upwards of $2 million. But to her, the community that’s sprouted up around EtherRocks is worth more than any return on investment.

Demirors said about 60 rock owners banded together in a community on Telegram, which includes traditional art collectors, poker players, and notable people in the crypto space such as tech entrepreneur and BitTorrent CEO Justin Sun. The group has a built-in validator to verify members actually own an EtherRock, Demirors said, and members must leave if they sell.

The group is even thinking about doing a December in-person meetup at Art Basel in Miami Beach to display their NFTs, Demirors said.

This selective group, mostly made up of crypto whales or hard-core crypto enthusiasts, have left many on the outside because of the skyrocketing prices for EtherRocks.

To bring EtherRock ownership to a bigger group of people, an anonymous EtherRock owner who goes by the name Sisyphus created fractional shares for his gray rock, rock No. 72 of 100.

About 600 people bought fractional shares of the Sisyphus rock and have raised its valuation to around 4,585 ETH or about $14 million as of Thursday. Sisyphus said he purchased his rock originally for 95 ETH, and retains 75% ownership of the NFT.

Yet, while investors big and small continue to put money into the EtherRocks based at etherrock.com, some are saying that these are not the original rocks.

Trevor McFedries, the cofounder and CEO of venture-backed tech company Brud and the FWB DAO, said he believes the NFTs sold at weliketherocks.com are the originals. The weliketherocks.com tokens have some quirky characteristics, and some say the project is an abandoned and buggy early version of the more popular EtherRocks sold at etherrock.com.

The weliketherocks.com tokens contain a bug that automatically relists a rock for sale when it is bought. To discourage someone buying your rock when it’s relisted at the same price, a user must quickly increase its price after purchasing.

As evidence that the rocks at weliketherocks.com are the originals, some people like McFedries point to a line in what they say is the contract code for the EtherRocks selling for millions that refers to the other rocks as “the original EtherRock contract” and mentions the relisting bug.

Courtesy of Etherscan.io

Despite some celebrity buyers such as Logan Paul buying NFTs on weliketherocks.com, the EtherRock website says the weliketherocks project should be avoided. On the etherrock.com website, there is a note specifically pointing to weliketherocks as the work of an unnamed scammer who took advantage of the relisting bug to claim free rocks for himself. The note says the bug in the contract for the weliketherocks NFTs allows rocks to be minted by anyone for free and anyone who buys a rock from this website is “…sending your ETH to a cockroach.”

While there continues to be a debate about which form of EtherRocks is the original project, communities have formed around both that have put an emphasis more on the cultural value of the rocks than their possible returns.

McFedries said he purchased his rocks at weliketherocks.com because they are a slice of history that in his mind goes back farther than the more popular EtherRock project. He intends to hold them for a while.

“I think, you know, it being the original was really cool to me,” he said. “I feel like I found the original screen print or the original letterpress, and I’ve been able to participate in that.”