The settlement resolves investor claims that he endorsed unregistered securities. The court also awarded $2.9 million in attorney fees and costs. Meanwhile, the team behind Melania Trump’s meme coin MELANIA is also under fire after $30 million in tokens were quietly moved and partially sold without any disclosure. This caused concerns about transparency and control. In a separate controversy, a New York court quickly stopped a hearing after a defendant used an AI-generated avatar to argue his case.
Shaq Settles with Astrals NFT Investors
Shaquille O’Neal reached a final court-approved settlement in a class-action lawsuit related to the now-defunct Astrals non-fungible token (NFT) project. He agreed to pay up to $11 million.
The settlement was approved by Florida federal judge Federico Moreno on April 1 and was made public on April 8. It resolves the claims brought by buyers of the Astrals NFT collection and the project’s associated GLXY tokens. The class group, led by Daniel Harper, alleged that they suffered investment losses after purchasing the assets, and claimed O’Neal promoted and participated in the unregistered sale of securities.
The approved settlement includes a fund of up to $11 million for eligible class members who bought Astrals NFTs from May of 2022 to Jan. 15 of 2024, or who purchased GLXY tokens up until mid-January. The court also awarded $2.9 million in attorney fees and costs. Judge Moreno stated in his order that the legal fees requested by the lead class counsel were deemed fair and reasonable by the plaintiffs.
The lawsuit was originally filed in May 2023, and it accused the former NBA star of using his celebrity status to promote the Solana-based NFT project that featured 10,000 unique 3D avatars created by artist Damien Guimoneau. The project marketed a virtual metaverse-like environment where users could interact and play, and O’Neal was portrayed as a central figure.
However, the collection has seen no marketplace activity for the past two years, and the broader NFT market is also very sluggish. According to data from CryptoSlam, total NFT sales reached only $27 million as of April 7, which is a stark contrast from the industry’s $2 billion weekly highs during the NFT boom in late 2021.
NFT weekly sales volume (Source: CryptoSlam)
MELANIA Team Quietly Offloads Millions
Other celebrities are also raising eyebrows with their blockchain projects. The team behind Melania Trump’s meme coin, Melania Meme (MELANIA), recently came under even more scrutiny after blockchain analytics firm Bubblemaps revealed that $30 million worth of tokens were quietly moved from community funds and are now being sold.
In an April 7 post on X, Bubblemaps said that 50 million MELANIA tokens were transferred to a single wallet before being distributed across multiple addresses. From there, around $3 million worth was sent to exchanges, two new positions worth $6 million each were opened, and $500,000 was sold. This all happened without any public acknowledgment from the project’s team.
The analytics firm also pointed out that 92% of MELANIA’s token supply is still held by wallets that are associated with the team, which raises concerns that more sell-offs could follow. Despite the large movements, no one affiliated with the MELANIA project commented on the transfers or sales.
MELANIA was launched on Jan. 19, just a day after President Donald Trump introduced his own meme coin and a day before his return to the White House. However, MELANIA has plummeted in value. From its peak price of over $13, the token crashed by more than 96% and now trades around $0.51. The crypto also suffered a more than 7% drop in price over the past 24 hours as well, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
MELANIA’s all-time price action (Source: CoinMarketCap)
Bubblemaps also previously exposed that Hayden Davis, a self-identified co-creator of MELANIA, was covertly offloading tokens using single-sided liquidity. Davis reportedly used similar tactics with another meme coin called LIBRA, which was linked to Argentine President Javier Milei and caused political controversy after its value also collapsed.
(Source: X)
The turmoil surrounding MELANIA comes during a broader decline in meme coin interest. According to data from Dune Analytics, the number of meme coins successfully graduating from Solana-based launchpad Pump.fun dropped from 5,400 per week in January to just 1,500 by March. Similarly, SolScan reported that only 31,651 new Solana tokens launched on April 5. This is a very sharp decline from the 95,578 that were created at the peak of January’s meme coin craze.
Defendant Slammed for Using AI in Court
Meanwhile, a New York appeals court recently encountered a very unusual scene when Jerome Dewald, a 74-year-old defendant representing himself in an employment dispute, submitted an AI-generated avatar to present his legal arguments during a hearing. The incident took place in late March and was captured on a livestream.
The incident immediately drew a strong reaction from Justice Sallie Manzanet-Daniels, who interrupted the session only seconds after it began. The judge questioned the nature of the figure on screen and was visibly frustrated after learning it was a digital creation. Dewald admitted, “I generated that,” clarifying that the avatar was not a real person.
Livestream of Jerome Dewald’s AI-generated avatar (Source: YouTube)
Justice Manzanet-Daniels was especially disappointed about the fact that she was not informed earlier, and also pointed out that Dewald previously appeared in court and spoke without any difficulty. She asked whether he had any condition preventing him from speaking, and sharply warned, “You are not going to use this courtroom as a launch for your business,” before ordering the video to be turned off.
Dewald later apologized by saying that he believed the avatar could articulate his arguments more effectively than he could. He explained to The Associated Press that he requested permission to submit a prerecorded video and used a San Francisco-based tech company to create the avatar, though he ran out of time to generate a realistic version of himself.
The episode adds to a growing list of incidents involving artificial intelligence in legal settings. In 2023, a New York attorney came under fire for including fictitious case citations that were generated by ChatGPT in a legal brief. More recently, Arizona’s Supreme Court adopted AI avatars to summarize rulings for the public.
The US Federal Trade Commission also started cracking down on companies accused of misleading consumers with AI tools, including one firm that promoted an AI-powered legal representative. Overall, the Dewald case shed some light on the legal community’s struggle to navigate the changing role of AI in courtrooms and raises many questions about appropriate use, transparency, and ethical boundaries.
