Cole Villemain, the Pudgy Penguins co-founder voted out by holders in January 2022, sold out a 44,444-piece NFT collection on Robinhood Chain in under an hour early Tuesday. The collection, called Spritehood, brought in roughly $1.28 million based on an onchain count of the mint transactions.
Posting under the name ColeThereum, Villemain opened the public mint for Spritehood at 2:18 a.m. ET on Aug. 11. 「The mint is open. Everyone is welcome. Have fun choosing your class,」 he wrote. Fifty-seven minutes later, he posted again: 「Sold out. I'm back in the NFT game.」
Onchain tally put proceeds at about $1.28 million
An onchain analysis published by the X account 0xlaplaced said the take was higher than the figures circulating while the sale was still live. Based on mint events, the analyst said the paid sale lasted 53 minutes and 48 seconds, starting from the first paid mint at 06:17 UTC.
The breakdown showed 37,430 tokens sold at $17 and 5,526 sold at $117, matching a $100 upgrade offered on the mint site. That put total proceeds at $1,282,852, equal to 684.28 ETH at the contract’s mint-time pricing.
According to the same analysis, before the paid sale started, the contract deployer issued 1,488 tokens for free across 20 zero-price transactions. 0xlaplaced also said the $755,000 and $775,000 figures that spread on X were only snapshots captured before the mint had finished.
The tally came from one independent analyst, not from the project team or from a verified contract.
Contract code is not verified
On Robinhood Chain’s Blockscout explorer, the Spritehood Wisp ERC-721 token is listed under the symbol WISP at address 0xd6577124F96394faee65AfD2408f2ffA88445f63, with a total supply of 44,444. The explorer also shows that the source code is unverified.
That leaves buyers without published contract code to inspect the mechanics used to price and distribute the tokens.
Villemain openly previewed the drop
Villemain had telegraphed the launch in advance. On July 11, while teasing the project, he wrote that he was 「delusional enough to believe I can drop the #1 NFT on Robinhood Chain」 and said it was 「90% built.」
Weeks later, he promoted a giveaway by calling it 「running back one of the oldest tricks in the book of 2021 NFT projects,」 offering to design and mint a token for a user who liked, reposted and followed the Spritehood account.
Sixteen minutes into the sale, he wrote that it 「feels so good to be back」 and added, 「haters will be out tonight but I don't care.」
Criticism followed during the mint
It did. X user HanIsRich described the sale as 「purely a cashgrab,」 writing that 「there is no NFT infrastructure or mechanism he will build that will cost up to 20% of the mint funds.」 HanIsRich also argued that if mints like this keep happening, 「liquidity on the chain will easily be extracted by a few [people,] and it turns to a dead chain.」
Past history drove the scrutiny
Villemain’s record is a big reason the mint drew so much attention.
Blockchain investigator ZachXBT published a thread about him on Aug. 11, 2021, writing that the NFT boom 「brings opportunists who deceive people at whatever cost to get what they want.」 The report noted that the Spritehood sellout landed exactly five years later.
On Jan. 5, 2022, Pudgy Penguins opened a community vote in its Discord for Pudgy Penguin, Lil Pudgy and Pudgy Rod holders. Holders used that vote to remove the founding team after accusations that the team had misused the project treasury. Those claims remain allegations, and Villemain has not been charged over them. Under new management, Pudgy Penguins later became one of the most commercially successful NFT brands.
What buyers receive is still unclear
For the 44,444 buyers, the unresolved question is what they actually get for $17 or $117. Villemain has talked about infrastructure and mechanisms still to come, but the contract that collected the funds has not published verified code.