Pixel Vault Removes CEO Following Self-Dealing and Rug Pull Accusations

Non-fungible token (NFT) firm Pixel Vault is beneath hearth for its involvement in what seems to be a roughly $3.5 million rug pull scheme involving its founder and former CEO. Within the newest flip of occasions, the corporate introduced on Wednesday that it has eliminated Sean Gearin, also referred to as GFunk, from his place as CEO. The challenge didn’t present particulars concerning the alleged rug pull, however said that the now ex-CEO’s “actions are beneath evaluate.”

GFunk has been accused by a number of NFT neighborhood commentators and former companions on X of deceptive buyers for private revenue. Particularly, GFunk allegedly inspired buyers to to rotate the ecosystem’s PUNKS token — which represents fractionalized possession in Pixel Vault’s CryptoPunks assortment — into a brand new token, dubbed GG. The capital rotation occurred between when GG launched in December 2023, and as much as the time of the public sale of the corporate’s CryptoPunks assortment in 2025. GG is the official token of RebootGG, which is beneath the Pixel Vault ecosystem umbrella.

Concurrently, GFunk allegedly accrued massive quantities of PUNKS, simply in time for the corporate’s CryptoPunks vault to be auctioned off for 930 ETH, or $3.4 million, on June 5, leaving GFunk personally with a big quantity of the proceeds.

CryptoPunks valuation device PunkPredictor claimed that the public sale lot was price nearer to 950 ETH on the time.

CryptoPunks public sale valuation. Supply: PunkPredictor

Group Response

One NFT collector, often called Rodo, slammed the previous CEO in an X submit over the weekend, stating “GFunk pulled off one of the blatant rugs I’ve seen shortly.”

Rodo went on to record their allegations in opposition to GFunk, together with that the CEO had “raised a whole lot of tens of millions with Pixelvault,” tricked customers into shifting funds from PUNKS into GG, and that he was “silently auctioning the punks vault[.]” However, Rodo famous, buyers took discover.

When onlookers known as out GFunk for what seemed to be nefarious habits with the vault public sale, Rodo claims that the Pixel Vault CEO promised that “proceeds will probably be used to construct the ecosystem,” earlier than continuing to close down operations, claiming to be hacked, and going darkish on social media.

GFunk’s most up-to-date X submit is from June 22.

Different NFT OGs have been fast to affix the general public shaming. Beanie, one other nameless, however notable, collector, had been concerned with Pixel Vault earlier than a public falling out with GFunk, which resulted within the crew eradicating him from operations.

Beanie known as out not simply GFunk, but in addition NFT lending platform GONDI, for participation within the scheme. In a submit on July 28, he accused the NFT platform of making a personal PUNKS mortgage previous to the vault public sale. Beanie alleged:

Beanie’s assertion implies that GFunk not solely misled buyers to generate profits off the sale of the public sale, but in addition leveraged his advisory function to run up the public sale itself.

It’s price noting that Pixel Vault was publicly bidding on the gathering at under the public sale lot’s market worth, which can suggest honest play and clear practices within the public sale bidding course of.

Pixel Vault is thought for creating the Punks Comics ecosystem, and the challenge raised $100 million for growing NFT infrastructure in 2022, along with funds accrued from its a number of assortment mints.

In the course of the 2021 NFT bull run, NFTs within the Pixel Vault MetaHero assortment — which is the ecosystem’s profile-picture NFT (PFP) assortment — traded at over 10 ETH per NFT, or $40,000 on the time. At the moment, the gathering is altering arms for just below 0.03 ETH, or about $107.

MetaHero worth chart, 2021-2025. Supply: OpenSea