Coffeezilla vs Logan Paul: CryptoZoo investigation and response

Logan Paul publicly promoted CryptoZoo beginning in 2021 as a blockchain-based game involving NFT animals and ZOO tokens. By late 2022, the promised game had not been delivered in the form buyers expected. Coffeezilla published a three-part investigation on December 16, 20, and 23, 2022 examining the project's development failures, people involved in the project, token trading, unpaid-development allegations, and losses reported by purchasers. Coffeezilla argued that Paul still bore responsibility for promoting and failing to deliver CryptoZoo while also noting evidence that Paul did not personally sell Zoo Tokens and had taken some corrective action against suspicious wallets. Paul initially disputed the investigation, publicly promised to expose what he described as bad actors, invited Coffeezilla onto Impaulsive, and on January 3, 2023 released a response accusing Coffeezilla of misleading reporting and threatening a defamation lawsuit. Coffeezilla defended his reporting and responded publicly to the legal threat. On January 7, Paul reversed course, apologized to Coffeezilla, withdrew the lawsuit threat, and said his focus should be making CryptoZoo purchasers whole. On January 13, Paul announced a three-step recovery plan including an NFT buyback and a promise to finish the game. Coffeezilla continued monitoring the promised recovery and in June 2023 said purchasers still had not received the promised refund. In January 2024, Paul announced a new buyback funded with more than $2.3 million of his own money for certain eligible Base Egg and Base Animal NFTs, while excluding ZOO-token losses and requiring participants to release legal claims against him. He also announced that the CryptoZoo game would not be released and filed crossclaims against Eduardo Ibanez and Jake Greenbaum, whom he blamed for sabotaging the project. Coffeezilla criticized the structure of the buyback in a January 5, 2024 video. On June 27, 2024, despite having withdrawn his earlier threat, Paul filed a federal defamation lawsuit against Coffeezilla and Coffee Break Productions. The complaint focused on three later publications: Coffeezilla's June 29, 2023 X post, his June 30, 2023 video Logan Paul's Scam Isn't Over, and his January 5, 2024 video Logan Paul's Refund. Coffeezilla denied wrongdoing and characterized the lawsuit as an attempt to punish or silence his reporting. In March 2025, a magistrate judge recommended allowing Paul's claims to continue, and in May 2025 the district judge denied Coffeezilla's motion for judgment on the pleadings. Those rulings determined only that the claims could proceed and did not establish that Coffeezilla's statements were false, defamatory, or made with actual malice. Separately, CryptoZoo purchasers continued litigating Holland v. CryptoZoo. In October 2025, the court dismissed all 27 claims in the then-operative complaint, but granted leave to amend 26 of them. Plaintiffs filed a Second Amended Complaint in November, and Paul moved to dismiss that pleading in January 2026. In July 2026, Paul and Coffeezilla reported that they had reached a deal resolving the defamation dispute. No public merits verdict was issued, and the settlement terms were not publicly disclosed in the materials reviewed.