These Montreal Brothers Turned a $98K Legal Battle With eBay Into a Sneaker NFT
by Calum Marsh for Complex Canada
When brothers Kevin and Thierry Mofo scored a pair of Nike Air Foamposite One Galaxies back in the winter of 2012, they had good reason to believe they’d hit the mother lode. As hype sneakers go, the Galaxies are a bona fide grail: hard to find, enormously coveted, and commanding insane prices on the resale market. So when they listed them on eBay shortly after buying them, it was hardly surprising that the final bid came in a little under $100,000. That’s just how hot these shoes are.
Photographed by Malvestida
Except for the sale never actually went through. eBay, sensing fraudulence or some kind of error, pulled the Mofos’ listing without so much as a warning, robbing them of the sale and booting them from the platform. While the brothers initially won a court case against the e-commerce giant over the kicks, the Quebec Court of Appeal sided with eBay in 2018. After all that excitement, they stood to wind up with nothing.
A decade later, Kevin and Thierry have founded Soles of Justice, and under its name, they are planning to finally make good on the promise of that original sale. Together they are launching their very first NFT sneaker, minted on the Ethereum blockchain, which they plan on auctioning off. The winner of the auction will also receive the real Foamposite Galaxies with the purchase—making this an NFT sale unlike any other. The whole plan, the brothers explain, is to raise awareness around user agreement policies on platforms like eBay, so that consumers like them can avoid getting burned as they did in the future.
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