Khan Academy charity auction ends in blatant wash trade, and Khan Academy removing several former employees from alumni Slack channel for raising concerns

An illustration of two people looking at a hologram of a sphere"Inspiring Teacher" NFT auction piece (attribution)
Khan Academy, an otherwise excellent non-profit offering online educational tools, announced they would be participating in an NFT charity auction on January 19. The auction featured an NFT playing card by Parallel, a sci-fi card game that requires players to buy packs of cards (NFTs) to play. Like so many blockchain gaming projects, it appears that the actual gameplay doesn't exist yet — somehow that required a $500 million funding round first.

The auction ended on January 21, with a winning bid of 77 ETH (nearly $200,000) from ParagonsDAO, plus the promise of another 34 ETH ($87,000) donation from the DAO to Khan Academy. However, ParagonsDAO is a DAO created specifically to "play a key role in Parallel's governance" and "support the creation of an ecosystem for Parallel to thrive". Former Khan Academy employee S. M. Lundberg raised their concerns about the wash trading, and "KA elevat[ing] Parallel on its own channels to a largely underage and under-resourced user base" in the Khan Academy Slack, and was removed from the channel by Khan Academy founder Sal Khan. At least three other former employees were removed from the channel for criticizing the decision to engage with the NFT project, as was an additional person who protested the removal of those raising concerns.

Although the auction ended with more than $250,000 going to Khan Academy, it is likely that Parallel got the better deal here — Khan Academy is an enormous name to have promoting one's project. Sal Khan actively hyped the project in various spaces, including in an appearance on CNBC's Squawk Box.