Pudgy Penguins NFT in turmoil with alleged fraud, community suggests Gabel

Pudgy Penguins, owner of the NFT project, discussed converting the project to a DAO after losing trust in the development team.

Community members Pudgy Penguins propose a fork, as the founders are accused of having skimmed money from the project’s coffers.

Pudgy Penguins NFT in an uproar

One of the most popular JPEG NFT collections on the market is in disarray.

Things started in the Pudgy Penguins community after one of their most loyal supporters, 9x9x9, Upload a series of tweets accusing one of the project’s co-founders, Cole Villemain, and the other founders of having exhausted all of the money stored in the collection’s coffers.

Pudgy Penguins launched in July amid the euphoria of the NFT room. The collection includes 8,888 avatars of animated penguins on the Ethereum blockchain. Similar to the other Avatar collections coming out in 2021, each penguin is unique with different characteristics that indicate how rare it is. NFTs can be minted for 0.03 ETH and sell out quickly. The collection has grown in popularity as key players in the NFT space get involved in promoting the project on social networking sites. In August the New York Times had Upload Part of the collection entitled, “I joined the Penguin NFT Club because that’s what we should be doing now.”

As the Pudgy Penguins website shows, Villemain is co-founder along with three other team members: mrtubby (real name Clayton Patterson), mickyj and jonah. The development team made about 266.64 ETH on the initial NFT sale, and they also earned some of the profits from the secondary deals (since NFTs are smart contracts, they are usually programmed to pay a portion of the fees of the secondary transactions to the creators). The collection has reached a total trade volume of $ 145 million since its launch on OpenSea.

During a storm of tweets, 9x9x9 specifically criticized Villemain, the project’s most popular character. Not only did the user claim that Villemain and the other co-founders had already used up all of the project’s funds, but also claimed that Villemain had offered to sell 20% of the project stake for 4,000 ETH, about $ 12.9 million at the moment .

However, this offer was rejected and then the development team reduced the price to 888 ETH. Currently, the community has proposed removing Villemain from the group, saying:

“Cole just causes a lack of trust and transparency between the founders and the community of the project. Let’s remove this tumor. “

9x9x9 is a supporter of Pudgy Penguins and has invested approximately $ 6 million in 244 NFTs and minted 540 NFTs from the Lil Pudgy collection, a by-product of Pudgy Penguins. The tweets too append The screenshot shows Villemain confirming that the project’s tills were empty at the time of sale.

Source: Twitter

The founder’s “bad” past

Villemain has been accused of misconduct inside and outside the NFT community. Interestingly, 3 days earlier, 9x9x9 tweeted, Villemain notification that I will take a break from using social media and focus on relaxing and doing what I love. Many members of the NFT community reacted vehemently to calling him a scammer.

Before Pudgy Penguins, Villemain launched the NFT – My Fucking Pickle collection. On OpenSea, 10,000 NFTs sold out quickly despite showing no innovation or creativity.

In August, Villemain was criticized by a prominent on-chain analyst, @zachxbt. accusations he committed many immoral acts. The article describes how Villemain started a dropshipping business called Eboy Outlet, whose Facebook and Instagram pages are full of negative reviews and complaints from dissatisfied customers who say they haven’t received their order or refund at this point. Both pages were removed shortly after @zachxbt released the alleged information.

Villemain then promised to gift one of his followers 1 NFT from the Fame Lady Squad collection before listing it on OpenSea. He confirmed this was his giveaway plan after a community member questioned the listing. Villemain also previously admitted that it had received funding to support projects of unknown origins.

Villemain has been in the NFT space since the technology’s popularity last year and is viewed as an influencer despite the controversy in the space. He has also amassed an extensive collection of digital assets. Etherscan data shows that its colethereum.eth wallet contains $ 742,500 worth of ETH, various other tokens, as well as hundreds of NFTs. In November, he posted a tweet expressing his enthusiasm for the wolf game, claiming he minted an NFT collection worth more than $ 500,000 at the time.

View Villemain wallet balance. Source: Etherscan

The future of the pudgy penguins

Before the storm of 9x9x9 tweets, Pudgy Penguins came into the focus of intense criticism from the NFT community. Pudgy Presents’ airdrop for Pudgy Penguin owners disappointed the community as they are more cartoon fishing rods than penguin shaped characters. The project is also organizing an NFT sale of baby penguins named Lil Pudgys, following the success of Pudgy Penguins. Most of the Lil Pudgys were sold through auction, which brought Villemain and the other co-founders a huge profit.

In poll Community on Villemain’s leadership, which took place on his own Discord channel, supported owner Pudgy Penguins’ removal from the leadership position.

Since then, many discussions about restructuring the project have surfaced. Several community members discussed the possibility of implementing the project and turning it into a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), similar to how many popular DeFi projects work. Another idea suggests that owners can lock their penguin NFTs in a smart contract and mint new NFTs in a 1: 1 ratio.

Amid the raging controversy, the official Twitter account of Pudgy Penguins notification that they will “finalize important details” with the development team and roll out a “groundbreaking update”. Many community members responded to this problem with negative comments.

In particular, the co-founders of Pudgy Penguins control ownership of the project. Several investors have expressed interest in acquiring the brand. The NFT marketplace Mintable, supported by Mark Cuban, has submitted a public offer to acquire the founding team of Pudgy Penguins for 750 ETH. The development team suggested accepting Mintable’s offer if it would get full control of the Pudgy Penguins smart contract, as well as the intellectual property rights in the penguins and other related NFTs. Another NFT collector named Beanie also made an offer, but later withdrew the offer because some staff advised him not to “give Cole any money”.

Despite all the uncertainty about the future of Pudgy Penguins, the average NFT floor price has skyrocketed in the past 24 hours, reaching 2,249 ETH.

Lower price limit for pudgy penguins | Source: NFTpricefloor

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