Is Pixelverse A Scam? Community Acts On Rising Exploitation - Insights
By Reel Coverage Jul 25, 2024
Post-listing and the reveal of airdrop allocation, the community behind Pixelverse's impressive growth launched massive social media campaigns to label the project a scam.
Many valued industry voices have pointed out the deceptive use of the TON ecosystem's new-found popularity and support as the key aspect of the exploit engineered by the Pixelverse team.
At A Glance
● Pixelverse listed its utility token $PIXFI on major centralized exchanges on July 18th, 2024.
● Based on reported numbers, less than 300k players out of 75 million got token allocations worth over $100.
● Pixelverse vesting mechanism imposes a -90% loss of allocated airdrop if players make immediate claims.
● So far, only “early adopters” airdrop allocation have been revealed, promised 20% of token supply airdrop is yet to be seen.
● In addition to PIXFI tokens, early adopters received NFT airdrops based on their in-game levels.
● TON and Notcoin team have deleted some posts with mentions of Pixelverse as community mass report Pixelverse social accounts as a scam.
Pixelverse Before Embracing The TON Ecosystem
Since the launch of Notcoin’s utility token $NOT, there's been a great wave of crypto projects launching mini apps on Telegram to capitalize on the popularity of Notcoin and the TON blockchain.
Pixelverse is one in hundreds of such crypto projects that swiftly developed and released a Telegram mini-app post-listing of Notcoin.
Prior to this, the Pixelverse project, along with its “blockchain in development - Pixelchain” appeared to be a “Cosmos and EVM-based” project as data from Internet Archive shows the mention of Pixelchain being a Cosmos SDK based EVM compatible “L1 network,” custom designed to house the Pixelverse and allow low cost transactions and easy user onboarding.
Recent claims made by the Pixelverse team is that Pixelverse or Pixelchain is the first TON layer 2 network, denoted on their X page.
This claim contradicts its original focus of being a Cosmos SDK based EVM compatible “Layer 1 network.”
Searching through Pixelverse X and Telegram channel reveals no mention of the TON blockchain until after the launch of its Telegram mini-app “PixelTap” on June 1st, which caused its user base to quickly grow to 1 million just a day after the rebranding.
To highlight a few key pointer events.
The first mention of user counts of the Pixelverse project was on March 22nd, an announcement was made on the Pixelverse Telegram channel to highlight the milestone of 10k freelancers.
On April 26th, 6 days after the initially planned Notcoin launch data - 20th April - which was planned to sync with Bitcoin's halving, the Pixelverse team released its mini-app with a basic tapping design.
Five days after the launch, the mini-app attracted 100k players as announced by the team on May 1st.
That said, on June 1st, the Pixelverse team announced the rebranding of the Pixelverse Telegram mini-app to “PixelTap,” and things began to pick up steam from here on.
The team reported being close to achieving 1 million players just a day after the rebranding, two weeks after the official launch of Notcoin’s utility token $NOT, setting the Telegram and TON ecosystem in the limelight.
Prior to this, Pixelverse made no mention of the TON blockchain until after it's partnership announcement with RoOLZ, an NFT collection on the TON blockchain.
The Changing Narrative
Pixelverse's second tweet on TON was made on 24th June, an announcement of an AMA with the TON blockchain set for 26th June.
The original AMA tweet made by the official TON blockchain X account has been deleted, however, the quote tweet by Pixelverse is still available.
The reason for the deletion of the original tweet but not the AMA tweet on the 26th June seems to be due to the fact that the announcement tweet for the AMA gave users and industry players the idea that Pixelverse will be launching on TON, but the team failed to fulfil this by launching the PIXFI token on Ethereum with a vesting mechanism that makes it less profitable for players to claim tokens right away to compensate for their months of involvement with the project.
Notcoin, which also made a partnership tweet and post on its Telegram channel with Pixelverse on the launch date has since deleted them after the launch was exposed to be on Ethereum and the mechanisms not being fair to players.
PIXFI was listed on major centralized exchanges on July 18th, 2024 with less than 300k players getting airdrop allocation worth over $100.
The Pixelverse claiming mechanism impossess a -90% tax on early claimers with claiming not being possible even after 7 days of trading being live.
Pixelverse allocated 20% of its 5 billion token supply to Pixelverse users, with additional 10% plus special NFTs based on in-game levels to early adopters. Whilst the Pixelverse team now claims that the Pixelchain is a TON Layer 2 blockchain with focus on gaming per its X profile bio, there has been no mention of this in the past whilst heavily leveraging the TON ecosystem and it's valued players and voices to promote it's project.
Feeling betrayed and disappointed by the unfair launch, the choice of blockchain for the token, and the deceptive use of the TON ecosystem to gainer exposure, the community has labelled Pixelverse a highly engineered scam, mass reporting it's social handles and launching social campaigns to spread the word on Pixelverse's exploitation of the TON ecosystem till today.
The community of crypto users and airdrop farmers are increasingly speaking and acting on the growing exploitation of the community by project builders and developers to gainer exposure, make successful token sales and attract ecosystem and VC fundings.
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