Did Pixelmon Rugpull? Founder Spends Dev Money on Blue-Chip NFTs

Pixelmon has been in the news for all the wrong reasons since their mint this week, but now the question is, did they rug pull? It has been discovered that their founder has spent money, which was meant to be used for project development, on blue-chip NFTs.

Pixelmon was one of the most hyped NFT collections of all time. Now, they’re receiving rug pull allegations.

A Summary of the Pixelmon Mint and Reveal

Most people have probably already heard what happened around the Pixelmon mint. Users were shocked to discover that the mint would be at a high price of 3 ETH (via Dutch Auction). This priced many genuine fans of the project out before it had even been released. They were further in the news after it had been calculated that the team had pocketed $70 million from the mint only. Later, their in-game art was critiqued for being “a joke”, as one Twitter user said. It has also been discovered that their artists have been hired from Upwork. This forced some people to suggest that that is why the quality was poor.

The current floor price of Pixelmon is 0.35 ETH. Its all-time average sale price since release has been 1.271 ETH. Many people have still shown confusion as to why people are buying at this all-time low price, based on the poor in-game art quality and rug pull allegations.

Pixelmon Rug pull Allegations

The rug pull allegations for the Pixelmon project surfaced after @Cr0ssETH on Twitter spotted that the buyer of their ape was Pixelmon’s founder, who went on a 400 ETH (over $1,000,000) OpenSea shopping spree that included BAYCs, CloneX, Azukis, Invisible Friends and more. The project’s founder ‘Syber’, responded to this Tweet. Stating: “Less than 5% of the funds raised were paid to myself and others for the time and work spent on Pixelmon. The rest is development and project money. Founders and projects always take a % for working on their project.”

In response to this, @fluffypony (founder of several projects) argued: “I’ve founded multiple successful projects including MyMonero, GloBee, Yat, raised funds for all of them. Founders NEVER take a % for working, & never take money off the table in an early round. You should have paid yourself a reasonable salary + performance bonuses in a year. Oh – also, where founders take money off the table in later rounds (by selling equity/tokens to later investors) they ask those investors to do so. Your actions are driven by greed. You would be laughed out of the room (and/or sued) if you were dealing with VCs and not chumps.”

Pixelmon retweeted another of their founder, Syber’s Tweets, in response to rug pull allegations, which read: “The Pixelmon reveal was unacceptable. This is what our Pixelmon look like in-game [images attached of in-game art]. Our NFT art failed to reflect this. Despite the fud, I will not go anywhere. The goal hasn’t changed. The funds will still be used to build our game. I will see this project through.” This was followed by a thread, which you can read fully here.