Foundation NFT Marketplace Shuts Down After Deal Collapse

Foundation, the Ethereum-based NFT marketplace that processed roughly $230 million in primary sales since its 2020 launch, has shut down permanently after Blackdove exited a planned acquisition and returned management to founder Kayvon Tehranian.

Blackdove announced it had purchased Foundation Labs, Inc. on Jan. 27, 2026, with Tehranian transferring ownership and joining Blackdove’s board. By mid-April the buyer completed due diligence only after the operational handover and concluded it would build a proprietary marketplace to serve clients in residential, office and hospitality settings.

On April 15, Blackdove executive Marc Billings posted from Foundation’s official account confirming the reversal and the return of management to Tehranian for an orderly wind-down. Later that evening Tehranian posted on X that the platform’s infrastructure had been shut down and the sale would not be completed.

Tehranian wrote that the company had pursued a sale to keep Foundation operating but, given current market conditions, there was no other buyer worth pursuing and the infrastructure had already been spun down.

The team emphasized that tokens minted on Foundation remain on-chain and under collector control. To give users time to secure media and metadata, the company will continue pinning files on IPFS for one year and recommended Pinata as a starting point for backups.

For NFTs still listed in Foundation’s marketplace smart contract, the team is building a tool to unlist and retrieve assets and will publish instructions soon. Tehranian noted that while the contract is non-custodial, the frontend had been the primary interface for interacting with it.

Foundation hosted several early high-profile sales, including Chris Torres’s Nyan Cat for about $600,000 and Edward Snowden’s Stay Free for 2,224 ETH, with proceeds benefiting the Freedom of the Press Foundation. The platform also handled sales of Disaster Girl, Overly Attached Girlfriend and Keyboard Cat.

The shutdown follows a wider contraction in the NFT marketplace sector since a 2021 peak. Platforms such as Nifty Gateway, MakersPlace, KnownOrigin and RTFKT have closed or shifted focus, and some larger marketplaces have moved toward trading fungible tokens. Industry trading volumes that reached billions of dollars in 2021 have fallen to levels measured in the tens of millions.

Tehranian closed his statement by thanking users and saying he believed the community would recover. “I acknowledge this is a disappointing outcome, but I continue to believe this community is resilient and better days are ahead. Thank you for your trust and partnership over the years. We’re grateful for the journey.”