Reclaim Your $SOL Before Metaplex DAO Does It For You: Here’s How

Metaplex, one of Solana’s oldest and most trusted infrastructure providers, has found itself in hot water. The creators of Solana’s most popular token standard have been accused of stealing SOL from network participants, with pleas for an alternative method going unanswered.

Dodging all criticism, Metaplex argues they are removing unnecessary bloat from the chain and easing network congestion.

How did we get here? Why are Solana community members accusing one of Solana’s most trusted protocols of theft and how can you reclaim your SOL before Metaplex DAO does it for you?

Metaplex Sets Sights on $11M Worth of Solana

On October 25, Metaplex released a new NFT token metadata resizing tool, enabling users to resize their old Solana NFTs and claim excess token account rent. Metaplex’s helpful tool solves two problems - reducing network bloat and congestion while simultaneously returning excess $SOL to users.

While the tool in itself undoubtedly benefits the Solana ecosystem, Metaplex included a controversial clause in the product’s rollout. Under the guise of “empowering the community to shape the future of the protocol”, Metaplex DAO will forcibly resize all remaining metadata token accounts after a six-month grace period.

In doing so, Metaplex would resize all existing NFT token standards and claim approximately 60k SOL (valued at over $11M) from network participants.

Prominent Solana community members have expressed concerns surrounding Metaplex’s approach. Some commenters have declared Metaplex’s move “an outrageous scam” or a dishonest attempt to “extend runway via theft”. Meanwhile, Save Finance founder Rooter argues that the scandal is “a violation of the crypto ethos”.

Fellow token standard developers have also spoken out against Metaplex. Ellipsis Labs co-founder and former Solana Labs engineer Jarry Xiao criticized Metaplex’s new “monetization strategy”.

Metaplex has remained silent throughout the affair. SolanaFloor engaged the Metaplex team in an attempt to better understand the motivations behind their approach. At press time, Metaplex declined to comment.

When a disgruntled community member asked the Metaplex Discord “How this is fair?”, Metaplex spokesperson Mack implied that the excess SOL claim was an “added bonus” and that users were encouraged to claim it.

According to the MetaplexDAO Github and Metaplex DAO Realms page, there is no record of this approach to claim un-resized TM rent from users. This implies that the decision to potentially bolster DAO funds was not discussed or voted on by the Metaplex DAO.

How to Claim Your SOL

To claim your share of the estimated 60k $SOL, network participants can visit the official Metaplex resizing tool. However, claimants should be aware that some users experienced unexpected changes to their asset’s utility. For example, one commentator mentioned that his NFT raffle tickets “stopped working” after using the resizing product.

Outside the official Metaplex UI, token management protocol Sol-incinerator has also enabled a TM resizing tool. 

Users can expect to claim ~0.002 $SOL per resized NFT, but this isn’t necessarily the most efficient way of cleaning wallets in exchange for $SOL. Sol-incinerator also supports token burning, which typically returns ~0.01 $SOL per burnt token. However, users should bear in mind that burnt tokens are permanently destroyed, while resized tokens can still be held, transferred, and traded.

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