With NFT sales drastically declining over the last few months, the NFT start-up Fair.xyz, decided to spice things up by hiring a Snoop Dogg impersonator to fool people at an NFT conference—and it worked. Here’s why.

Photo: Getty Images

The Snoop Dogg look-alike made his debut at the NFT.NYC conference in New York City’s Times Square on June 21, arriving in a rented Cadillac Escalade SUV sporting a glued-on mustache and accompanied by a fake security guard. Using the alias “Doop Snogg,” the famous Long Beach, Calif. rapper’s doppelgänger was given the celebrity treatment as fans fell for his disguise and requested selfies with him. While seemingly random, the trick was all part of a very specific mission by Fair.xyz to call out the prevalence of fakery in the NFT industry. 

To many fans, it likely made sense that Snoop Dogg would attend an NFT conference, after the rapper publicly shared on May 28 that he’d purchased two non-fungible tokens created by former Barclays Plc trader, Ovi Faruq. In fact, Snoop has shown some serious commitment to the industry as of late, from his official Twitter profile picture and posts to his verified account for Death Row Records. 

Believing the rapper was actually on-site, fans flaunted their surety across social media. Unfortunately, instead of being a fun and clever commentary on fraudulence in the NFT arena, to most, the statement was just confusing. NBC News reporter Kevin Collier posted a tweet explaining how he was initially fooled by the Snoop Dogg dupe and even asked for an interview before getting the real scoop about the impersonator being hired to “drum up excitement.” Snoop Dogg himself quote-tweeted Collier’s post on Twitter, simply captioning the post “Doop Snogg” for comical effect.

According to a statement sent to Insider, the prank was intended to highlight how bots, hackers, scammers, and other imposters have become commonplace in the NFT industry. “Doop Snogg was Fair.xyz’s “fun way” of promoting their “goal of removing imposters, bots, and fraud away from the NFT space.”

While it created some buzz, the stunt wasn’t enough to make the non-fungible token industry relevant again. As the NFT arena has quieted in recent months, fraudsters have moved in to cheat buyers and further tarnish the already tenuous reputation of cryptocurrency. While the Snoop Dogg scheme may seem playful for some, numerous NFT companies are seriously hurting. According to a May 2022 report from the Wall Street Journal, NFT “sales have plummeted 92% since they peaked in 2021,” meaning the industry is swiftly disintegrating after NFT trading was almost a $40 billion dollar market last year.

NBC News revealed that one of the most prominent NFT marketplaces, OpenSea, has failed to protect many artists’ work, which has resulted in an open season for hackers to steal assets and even hijack social media accounts to illegally sell NFTs. The corruption even extends to current allegations against former OpenSea employee Nathaniel Chastain being accused of NFT insider trading. While the Snoop Dogg/“Doop Snogg” ploy may have drawn attention to the failings of the NFT industry (and the gullibility of people, in general), it’s merely a grain in the sand when it comes to restoring the NFT arena to its former glory. 

Danielle Broadway is theGrio’s daily lifestyle writer, as well as a screenwriter, journalist and activist from Stockton, Calif. She has a bachelor’s and master’s degree in English from Cal State Long Beach with bylines in the Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, Cosmopolitan, Black Girl Nerds, Allure, USA TODAY, and more.

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