NFT

NFT Drama Ends For Shaquille O’Neal With Hefty $11 Million Settlement

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The NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal has agreed to pay $ 11 million for setting up a class action for its promotion of the failed Astrals NFT project. A federal judge in Florida approved the agreement on April 1, although the order only became public this week on April 8th.

Basketball icon caught in Krypto controversy

The lawsuit, which was first submitted in May 2023, claimed that O’Neal had promoted the sale of non-registered securities by the Astral NFT collection based in Solana. Investors who bought Astral NFTS or the GLXY token of the project between May 2022 and January 15, 2024 have now made compensation from the settlement fund.

Judge Federico Moreno previously admitted that the plaintiffs had submitted a plausible case that the former NBA star acted as a seller according to the securities law. The agreement is reached after months of legal back and forth, with O’Neal made an agreement with the plaintiffs in November last November.

Lawyers take 2.9 million US dollars home with them

As part of the processing package, the court approved 2.9 million US dollars in lawyers and the associated costs. Judge Moreno ruled that these fees were “fair and reasonable”, and found that none of the plaintiffs objections the amount that would receive the lawyers.

The lawyers were able to convince the Court of Justice that investors lost their money for the project due to the marketing campaigns of O’Neals.

Court files show that O’Neal asked potential investors to “jump onto the wave before it is too late”, which pursued him in court.

Screenshot of court document on Shaq's legal settlement. Source: Courtlistener

Failed project promised virtual meetings with Shaq

The astrals were released in April 2022 and offer 10,000 unique 3D Avatars designed by the artist Damien Guimoneau. The company presented itself as a comprehensive meta -verse experience through which users could interact with other users and with O’Neal themselves.

Despite the star power behind it, the collection has not shown any activity signs based on data from NFT Marketplace OpenSea in the past two years.

The entire crypto market capitalization currently at 2.39 trillion dollars. Diagram: Tradingview

According to reports, O’Neal reports that the project reports publicly even after the collapse of the large cryptocurrency exchange in November 2022.

The court threw a little victory and rejected the claims that it was a “control person” within the project – a name that had suggested that he had actual power over his operations instead of only serving as a famous face.

The NFT market continues to go down

The settlement comes when the wider NFT market is struggling to regain its earlier fame. The total sales volume of NFT was only $ 27 million for the week until April 7, 2025, a dramatic decline compared to the weekly volumes in the amount of over $ 2 billion in 2021.

This downward trend continues, whereby the trade volumes fell by more than 60% in February alone. The drop continues a slide that began in early 2024, which indicates that the once digital collector’s market remains in a longer slump.

Selected picture by Megan Briggs/Getty, Diagram from Tradingview

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