The Pixelmon collection is an infamous NFT project that garnered huge amounts of hype before its reveal earlier in 2022. Advertised as a mix between Pokemon and Minecraft, the project was meant to establish a premiere space in the metaverse for token holders to enjoy the game. 

Following a disappointing art reveal, the project slowly fell apart as traders immediately left the project. Pixelmon was quickly deemed a rug pull and disappeared. However, it appears that the team has remained committed by updating the art months later. 

So, what’s causing this return to the project or did they never truly leave in the first place?

What is Pixelmon?

The original Pixelmon game is an old Minecraft mod which mimics the Nintendo Pokemon video game series created by Game Freak. Due to pressure from the Pokemon Company, the mod was forced to shut down. Partnered with Magic Media Studios, the team behind Pixelmon planned to bring this mod back to life on the blockchain. 

Players would be able to explore a virtual world called Eden, where creatures can be caught and collected similar to the Pokemon games. Virtual land plots and player hubs also dot the world of Eden so that tokens from the game can be exchanged. 

You can read more about Minecraft and GameFi here. 

What was the rugpull?

During the pre-reveal phase, expectations for the artwork and utility of the tokens were extremely high. Many were convinced that the team had been crafting high-quality tokens for purchase. However, the facade was dropped after the artwork was revealed.

The general opinion of the artwork was terrible. Memes of one character in particular - Kevin - went wild as token holders questioned what it was that they had bought. The project was quickly disregarded as a major rug pull, ruining many people’s expectations of what they thought was an exciting new blockchain game. 

The team continued their work

On August 2nd, the team announced that their new artwork had gone live and token holders would be able to refresh their metadata to an entirely new-looking design. The artwork was surprisingly high-quality, however, a hesitancy still lingered. 

Was the team actually delivering on the promises that they advertised pre-mint or was this just another ploy to pull the rug out from underneath a new set of hopeful token holders?

Are teams delivering on their products?

While the Pixelmon team’s reputation has been damaged, it appears that they never totally abandoned the project. With approximately 6,000 Eth generated from the mint, it was likely that the team would never resurface again, but here they are - building the project they committed themselves to create. So, it begs the question: how many other projects that have quickly been forgotten are still being worked on by full-time teams? 

During this bear market, many ambitious projects were unable to keep holders interested because of consistently low floor prices and market trends which favored degen token flipping over collections with serious potential. Projects like PxN have watched momentum come to a halt, dropping from a floor price that used to hover above 3 Eth down to as low as .17 Eth. 

Yet, those projects made immense profits at the mint and they have likely been able to survive off of that liquidity long enough to develop meaningful advancements in their work. If what is happening at Pixelmon is genuine and legitimate, there might be a plethora of exciting project developments in the weeks and months ahead from a variety of different web3 teams.