The Pixelmon non-fungible token (NFT) project became the laughingstock of crypto Twitter after the highly anticipated artwork series was panned as shoddily crafted and just plain ugly.
The project has gravely disappointed investors who pooled US$70 million after releasing NFTs nowhere near the quality promised in their pitch images. This resulted in falling floor prices where some investors ended up calling it “pretty much a rug pull”.
Pixelmon, a non-fungible token (NFT) project that raised over $70 million earlier this month, has recently revealed the artworks for which users paid up to $10,000…and the crypto community has been having a field day with them ever since.
Twitter users have since openly shared their memes regarding the project after seeing the 3D NFTs that were minted. It wasn’t just the lack of quality that seemed to be a problem, some also looked unfinished while others were acting in peculiar ways:
Following the auction, the price of Pixelmon NFTs on the secondary market had dropped around 60 percent from the original 3 ETH mint price and is now at a 0.36 ETH floor price on Opensea. This caused early investors who minted the NFTs and held them to lose a considerable amount of money.
According to the project’s road map or “lite paper,” it promised the “the largest and highest quality game the NFT space has ever seen.”
That included building out a Pixelmon metaverse with play-to-earn features, as well as perks for holders of the “Generation 1” Pixelmon, which included land airdrops, access to the Pixelmon token presale and staking rewards.
The backlash on social media prompted a swift apology from the Pixelmon team, which immediately switched into damage control mode.
“I would like to apologize on behalf of myself and Pixelmon for everyone that has been affected by this,” project lead Syber said Sunday in an “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) forum held on the Pixelmon Discord channel. “When we began this project, we were not thinking it would get as big as this.”
Syber attributed the botched artwork to poor execution and a “really small team,” and promised to make amends to holders of the Pixelmon NFTs.
To “fix” the situation, however, Syber promised “to pledge $2,000,000 in order to completely revamp and redesign our NFTs at a higher quality” by hiring “a reputable studio to do these redesigns.” Needless to say, the community was not happy with this statement as well, quickly noting that Pixelmon plans to spend only about 3% of the raised funds to fully revamp its project.
Meanwhile, the developers reportedly had no issues with spending the fund on personal NFT purchases lately. As one user noted in the project’s Discord channel, “Pixelmon use the fund buying bayc clone and azuki.”