EETree LLC seems to be a shell company owned by EETree Info & Tech Limited in China (https://www.eetree.cn).

I'm not sure what that means as far as payment processing etc, apparently sellers were all cut off with money owing and still have no explanation.

Also the AI-generated blog post on the Tindie site (under the name/account of assumedly-previous staff?), and the post above that says absolutely nothing about what's actually going on...

It looks from the outside like a Chinese tech blog just randomly bought Tindie, broke the site while moving it to their own servers, and now are trying to figure out how to run it?

Yeah, pretty sure there is a better way to make a transition—even a complete stack rewrite. Get your new stack operating before you make the switch—and you could have even staged the switch-over starting with one region first.

If they purchased the site, I get it, new servers, etc. But part of the purchase agreement should have stated that the site continues to be run/maintained for 6 months or so until the new owners have a replacement ready.

(I feel like someone reading HN could have (vibe?) coded a replacement for Tindie by now. I mean Tindie does have the name recognition… kind of?)