Everything You Should Know About The RTFKT Project

Update, October 2026: This guide first appeared in February 2022, shortly after Nike bought RTFKT. RTFKT no longer operates: Nike announced the wind-down in December 2024, and the studio closed at the end of January 2025. We have added what happened and what it means for holders.

What Is RTFKT?

RTFKT (pronounced “artifact”) was founded in 2020 by Benoit Pagotto, Chris Le and Steven Vasilev. The studio described itself as creator-led and combined game engines, augmented reality and non-fungible tokens to sell virtual sneakers and other digital collectibles. Its early drops sold out within minutes and made it one of the best-known brands of the 2021 NFT boom.

Nike’s Acquisition

Nike announced the acquisition of RTFKT in December 2021 without disclosing a price. Nike chief executive John Donahoe said the deal would help Nike serve athletes and creators “at the intersection of sport, creativity, gaming and culture”, and RTFKT co-founder Benoit Pagotto said the studio would benefit from Nike’s expertise. At the same time Nike filed trademarks for virtual shoes and apparel, at a moment when Facebook had just renamed itself Meta and many brands expected the metaverse to become a new retail channel.

CloneX and the Nike years

The most important RTFKT collection was CloneX, a set of 20,000 3D avatars created with Japanese artist Takashi Murakami in November 2021. It was followed by the MNLTH boxes and Nike-branded virtual and physical sneakers. Together these drops made Nike one of the highest-earning brands in NFTs, largely through secondary-sale royalties.

Why RTFKT shut down

Demand for NFTs fell steadily after 2022, and Nike had already projected lower revenue from its digital division. On 2 December 2024 RTFKT announced that it would wind down its operations. A last collection, the “Blade Drop”, followed in January 2025, and operations ended at the end of that month. The closure came during a broader restructuring after Elliott Hill became Nike’s chief executive in October 2024.

What the closure means for holders

The NFTs themselves remain on the blockchain, but the services around them, such as forging, physical redemptions and RTFKT’s own website, ended with the studio. Prices collapsed: according to a class action filed in April 2025 in federal court in Brooklyn, some Nike NFTs that sold for around $8,000 in 2022 traded at about $16 after the closure. The lawsuit seeks at least $5 million and argues that the NFTs were unregistered securities. At the time of this update we found no ruling in the case.

The lesson goes beyond Nike: an NFT whose value depends on a company’s promises is only as durable as that company’s interest in the project. For other examples of how brand NFTs lost value, see the Bored Ape bought by Justin Bieber and Twitter’s NFT avatars.

What Are NFTs?

Non-fungible tokens are unique tokens on a blockchain that record ownership of a specific digital item, such as an artwork, a piece of music or a virtual sneaker. Unlike Bitcoin, where every coin can be swapped for any other, each NFT is distinct. That uniqueness is what made collections like CryptoPunks, Beeple’s works and RTFKT’s sneakers valuable during the boom, and it is also why their prices depend entirely on demand for that one item.