When a super hyped NFT project seems to be nearing release only a few things seem to happen. The project either lives up to the hype and people seem to really enjoy it and its niche is carved out, the project turns out to be a rug pull and all the people who bought in are out of luck, or the project falls on its face. Now I have seen several projects stumble and fall out of the gates but none of them are remotely near the spectacular failure that the Pixelmon "hatching" was. 

What is Pixelmon and What Happened 

The idea of Pixelmon heavily borrows from the idea of Pokemon but it is on the blockchain and is supposed to have browser-based gameplay by the end of the year. Their minting process choice was one I found a little interesting but they leveraged perfectly with the huge hype behind the project. A Dutch auction format starting at 3 ETH and falling 0.1 ETH every 10 minutes till all 10,000 Pixelmon sold out. To show how hyped it was the mint only fell to 2.4 ETH before all of the NFTs were sold. In all the team raised over $70 MILLION during its minting which further exacerbated the hype behind it. 

More and more mints are moving towards the plan that when you buy the NFT at the mint you do not get to see what you received immediately rather there is a set date where all of the NFTs will be revealed. Pixelmon called theirs the "hatching" and so from February 7th, when the mint occurred, till February 25th the excitement around the project was crazy. Then the reveling happened on February 26th.... it did not go according to plan at all. The fall from grace was not pleasant for the Pixelmon team as they were completed destroyed due to how bad the Pixelmon looked. One in fact now has achieved meme status as "Kevin" or a spooky squirtle.

Since the reveal, Kevin has been the face of the disastrous project launch. Many people were quick to call it a scam and point out how the promo video and previously released Pixelmon greatly differed from the ones users received. I mean look at this one here and then imagine it in an open-world RPG game! It would have been super super nice! 

That sadly did not happen and the price of the Pixelmon has crashed dramatically. These Generation 1 Pixelmon was supposed to open up a huge world of possibilities for their holders including land airdrops, access to the Pixelmon token presale, and staking rewards. Pixelmon was supposed to take on Axis Infinity and create a AAA metaverse for the NFT holders. 

Pixelmon Team Response

I will give credit where credit is due and that is that the team behind the project has not cut their losses and disappeared as they could have. That being said they still definitely released a product that was nowhere near ready for the public. When the reveal happened it is safe to say that stuff hit the fan. Some people seemed to think it was a joke others were sure it was a rug pull but the team and more importantly the creator have stuck around. The creator operates under the pseudonymous Syber has since taken the bull by the horns and ridden out the ridicule and harsh blowback from the revel. 

What has been done to address this is the biggest question people have seemed to ask and Syber has announced $2 million will be spent revamping all of the art. The team also has partnered with Magic Media a video game development company. They have also added several new members to their team including a Chartered Accountant who will help provide financial oversite, management, and reporting. For the most part, almost every other day the team or Syber has posted an update or just reached out to make sure that people know what is occurring behind the scenes.

One aspect that they were upfront with from the beginning but due to the disastrous launch and feedback from the community has since shifted on was the contractual payments that the 5 core team members were due. These members agreed after the pushback of the lump sum payment being taken out of the gnosis wallet to return 80% of it and for the majority of the funds to be transferred to a multi-sig wallet. Over the next few months, the core members will get a set amount paid out to them as the project is worked on to make it what it was supposed to be. Also, the Pixelmon that Syber bought from his part of the core member payment has been listed for sale on OpenSea and the ETH he used from his pay returned to the project's wallet. 

Thoughts

Looking at this from the outside and as someone who has not invested in the project at all, I do find it pretty impressive that the team has stuck around to try and make this right. Looking around the DeFi and NFT world if a project received this level of the negative criticism it would be hard to find a team who didn't just cut and run but Pixelmon hasn't. They have accepted their fault in this and have been operating to try and fix it. Most importantly they have returned funds like their pay which is something you do not often see. If I was an investor I would be cautiously optimistic about the future of the project. Something that has stuck out to me is how the floor price of the project has not just absolutely collapsed to nothing. On OpenSea the floor price is 0.256 ETH which while a far cry from the 2+ ETH spent still isn't the worst. Many Pixelmon are listed at a current loss however compared to the 0 it could have hit people who are able to recap some of their money if they wanted to pull the plug.

Personally, I hope this project ends up recovering and I think that they have done a lot of steps to help right the ship. There still are a ton of things though that can/could go wrong but they have tried to minimize that as much as possible. I would love to see a game like this launch I mean I would really love Pokemon itself to launch as I grew up playing that game but since it hasn't and who knows if it ever will Pixelmon would be a pretty cool alternative if they can get a working product out by the end of the year like they plan to do. 

Please know I am not a financial advisor I am just someone who picked up on a trend and wanted to express it! Makes sure you always do your own research and never invest money you cannot afford to lose! If you enjoyed this article and would like to further support me below are a couple of referral links that if you used when signing up I would appreciate it! Also, follow me on Twitter @Cje95_

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