Those who invested 3 ETH or over $10,000 into the Pokemon-inspired NFT game Pixelmon now feel cheated. The NFT reveal took place over the weekend and presented investors with horrendously designed Pixelmon NFTs.
Pixelmon has generated a lot of interest and activity in recent days, following a sold-out minting event and a late reveal event. However, the NFT reveal spurred the community to unveil a whole bunch of red flags surrounding the Pixelmon project. The team allegedly used stock images and freelance designers to create mock-ups.
The Pixelmon NFT collection launched on February 7th and it generated an impressive $70 million in minting sales. According to the official website, the presale aimed to help fund the game development process, as the Pixelmon universe is still not publicly available. During the Dutch auction sale, collectors had a chance to mint a character NFT with a starting price of 3 ETH. The price dropped 0.1 ETH every ten minutes, as the team sold a total of 7,750 Pixelmon NFTs during the event.
The minting event was an undeniable success. However, red flags started popping up when the reveal of the designs was postponed several times. According to official announcements by Pixelmon creator Syberer, this belated reveal was necessary in order to deliver the best possible art to collectors. Unfortunately, what collectors received was not even close to what was initially promised and revealed in previews.
What did Pixelmon reveal?
The much anticipated reveal finally happened on February 25th. However, collectors were left baffled once they saw their designs. Pixelmon had promised an immersive 3D environment with impeccable designs. You can see a couple of preview shots below.
Unfortunately, what collectors got is not even close to the initial design previews shared by Syberer. It became clear that Syberer didn’t really have the designs ready for the initial reveal date of February 17th.
What’s more, the creator purchased stock Unity design models, and simply converted them to voxel assets. Importantly, the stock designs were purchased for about $160 each, which is hundreds of times lower than the starting mint price of 3 ETH.
To top it all off, many of the designs broke during the voxel conversion, resulting in very strange NFTs. Check out the images below to get a better idea of just how disappointing the final result was for collectors.
What happened with the $70 million?
Aside from the obvious misgivings of the NFT designs, there were some questionable decisions made regarding the use of the $70 million generated during the mint. After the reveal, Syberer released a statement, promising to spend about $2 million from the treasury in order to finish work on the graphics and make the designs better.
However, digging through the Etherscan transaction history for the Pixelmon treasury address, there is no such transaction. On the contrary, funds from the treasury went towards purchasing numerous NFTs from hot collections like BAYC, Azuki, and CloneX according to some members of the NFT community.
Additionally, a deeper look through the transaction history of the Pixelmon contract, shows that about 400 ETH from the treasury went to Uniswap for a USDC swap worth $1,339,420. For the moment, there have not been any announcements regarding the NFT designs or their eventual rework.
Pixelmon founder under attack as well
Aside from the rather shady execution of the Pixelmon reveal, OKHotshot.eth decided to dig through the founder’s background as well. Syberer is the single team member in the founder’s team of Pixelmon. While he, later on, hired a couple of people to help with the design of the NFTs, Syberer is a single force pushing this project and making governance decisions.
While this might be an admirable feat if the project is successful, it also poses the question of whether this person is simply trying to scam people. Unfortunately, the NFT community uncovered some details about Syberer’s previous business ventures which seem to point to the second. According to the research, Syberer used to be an active Kickstarter businessman.
He launched numerous campaigns, which were all funded. Unfortunately, they had to miraculously close down before the final product was released to customers. This is not incriminating in any way, however, such a background does not help in building up the credibility of the Pixelmon collection.
What’s next?
Pixelmon was a seriously hyped project, which sold out pretty fast. The upcoming game had caught the attention of NFT enthusiasts and blockchain gamers alike. However, these recent revelations and design problems raise questions as to the validity of the project overall.
Syberer has announced that despite the failed reveal, the designs of the Pixelmon NFTs will look better in the future. Additionally, the funds generated during the NFT mint will still be used to create a blockchain game.
It will definitely be worth it to see where Pixelmon goes from here. Stay tuned and follow DappRadar on Twitter to keep track of the Pixelmon saga and all news surrounding it. Additionally, you can check out DappRadar PRO to get the most up-to-date on-chain NFT sales data.
