Metaverse That Doesn’t Exist Yet Bags $70M in Ethereum

Two months ago, the NFT game project Pixelmon raised over $ 70 million in Ethereum from its Genesis. Most Pixelmon NFTs sold out near 3ETH, but the minimum price for the collection plummeted by more than 60%.

Pixelmon speculators hit hard

Mania is back in the NFT market.

Pixelmon, a metaverse project that promises AAA open-world adventure games, launched the Genesis NFT collection on Monday after just two months of activity. The 8,079 NFTs were sold in Dutch auction format and bids were 3 he started at ETH, which was about $ 9,489 at the time. All NFTs sold out within an hour and most were sold at the opening price. The project has raised an astonishing 23,055 ETH through NFT sales and is worth $ 71.4 million at current prices.

However, in the hours following the auction, the price of Pixelmon NFT in the secondary market plummeted. The market value of Pixelmon NFT is more than 60% lower than the mint price of 3 ETH (the current lowest price of Pixelmon NFT at OpenSea is about 1.12 ETH).

Pixelmon’s Twitter account Released just two months ago, it has already attracted nearly 200,000 followers. Pixelmon has only recently appeared in the NFT scene, with entry prices higher than most other NFT drops at launch, but speculators haven’t hesitated to rush into mint. There were other warning signs surrounding the project. The identities of the team members are unknown, and the project has little or no prior connection with key figures in the NFT space.

As part of its marketing campaign, Pixelmon has promised to use the fully developed Metaverse experience to create “the first AAA-quality game in NFT space.” Apart from this vague mantra, the project’s website reveals very little detail about game development and instead emphasizes the NFT roadmap. After the owners spent a lot of money on Genesis Mintha, Pixelmon also promised the opportunity to spend more on future sales of plots of virtual land similar to those found in Metaverse such as Decentraland and The Sandbox. Holders will also receive PIXEL tokens in the coming weeks, but the usefulness of the tokens remains a mystery.

Currently, the main thing NFT holders have to do seems to be screenshots of the Pixelmon game. Post to your project’s Twitter account.. The game itself hasn’t released an alpha version yet, and no proof of concept is available. However, users can download and play the 675MB Pixelmon demo.

Cryptographic briefing I tried the Pixelmon demo and found that it was an interactive movie trailer, not an indication of what the game would really look like. The graphics and lighting are of high quality, but the player has nothing to do with the demo other than the horse on the vehicle. After wandering for about 2 minutes, the demo will be clipped and faded to black with the message “Continue” on the screen. The whole experience raises more questions about the game than it answers.

Since the beginning of this year, the popularity of NFTs has exploded again, and the value of avatar projects such as Bored Ape Yacht Club and upcoming gaming projects such as Crypto Unicorns has skyrocketed. As a result, speculation about the new project is rising as NFT flippers expect to hit the next project hard. However, while the value of quality projects is multipled, many projects are trying to take advantage of the current market vibrancy.

Over time, it will become clear whether Pixelmon will work properly with NFT holders. This project is hugely funded and is comparable to the budget for many AAA games developed in recent years. With cash infusions from NFT mint, the Pixelmon team will estimate an alpha release date for any of the next 4-5 months. Pixelmon developers need to work quickly to deliver their products in such a short timeline, especially if thousands of NFT holders are making very large investments.

Disclosure: At the time of writing this feature, the author owned ETH and several other cryptocurrencies.