by Onemustardgrain
We’ve all seen the news. The latest project Pixelmon… flopped. Not surprisingly people are upset.
The above tweet really explains it all. Unfortunately, stuff like this will continue to happen.
However as NFT gamers, and ultimately investors in the space. We need to start doing deeper research on these projects, and start demanding radical transparency not only from NFT gaming projects, but ALL NFT projects moving forward.
Light Backstory and projects vision:
On February 7th, this tweet was made by the official Pixelmon Twitter page. It indicates that the project had sold out of all of it’s NFTs in a single day.
“Pixelmon began as a desire to create a fun, open, and immersive world set to bridge the gap between NFT and mainstream gaming industries Pixelmon will introduce a revolutionary play-and-earn experience for millions of people across the ever growing space that is blockchain gaming”. — Roadmap
The project held a Dutch auction, and buyers spent 3 ETH(around $9–$10k) to get the benefits of being early investors of the project. This included getting access to airdrops, land, and increased play to earn capabilities. The project promised to be the best thing the NFT gaming space had seen. Sadly though, on it’s release day it was anything but.
Release day:
On it’s release, the memes, and the hate on twitter were rampant. Buyers of the project were promised quality 3D pixelated NFTs, but instead received NFTs similar to the picture above.
Words from the founder:
The project’s main leader, said in a tweet:
“Unity modelers were hired and paid to work on our pre-models. They were hired and the models were made before we had any funding whatsoever. The plan was always to use the funding raised from mint to create proper and better models.”-Syber
Since the projects failed release, the current floor of the project has plummeted to a staggering 0.3 ETH.
Snapshot taken 3/3/2022
The obvious question is why start, with such a high mint price of close to $10,000? Nothing that the project had done thus far warranted such an astonishing valuation. Most projects including, the now famous bored ape yacht club , start with an initial mint of $300.
A lot of things at this point, are left up in the air to be questioned. At this time the teams lead, Syber has said he will not be giving up on making this game a reality, and giving back to the people that are still convicted in Pixelmon’s future.
Closing thoughts:
Personally I’m sad for all the people that lost money. Scams like this can really hurt the NFT space, and is often what make headlines in the mainstream media.
Since we sit in an emerging market place there aren’t a lot of rules yet. However, there are always red flags. The main one that I see is the initial mint price. To demand $10k for a single NFT with no prior history in the space or track record is absurd. This does not mean all projects with an initial floor of $300 are the next blue chips, but the initial mint price is definitely something to be taken into consideration.
In closing, the NFT gaming space will definitely have an interesting year, with this being one the projects to fail so spectacularly. Moving forward into the future of this space, please remember to always DYOR and take everything you read or hear with a grain of salt.
