- World’s first NFT projects aggregator acquires 60% controlling stake in Pixelmon
- Play-To-Own model will include Free-to-Play option to support mass adoption
- First-in-market to launch fully-3D-animated 68 genesis species
- Game Alpha Testing Groups to start in Q1 2023; game already has over 30,000 active community members
26 September 2022 (UTC 3:00PM) — Pixelmon has relaunched with a new leadership team and gameplay roadmap to deliver a first-of-its-kind Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) with end-to-end web3 capabilities. LiquidX, a web3 venture capital studio, took over the project at the end of Q2 2022. Pixelmon currently has over 30,000 active community members, as well as over 7,000 aggregate Non-Fungible Token (NFT) holders across collections and potential players ahead of its Alpha Launch in Q1 2023.
LiquidX has assumed a fully operational position within Pixelmon, with one of its co-founders stepping in as the full-time CEO of Pixelmon to manage day-to-day operations. LiquidX will oversee all departments, from blockchain development and game design, to tokenomics and treasury management. The LiquidX founding team comprises web2 pioneers that developed a generation of startup unicorns and some of Southeast Asia’s earliest blockchain adopters.
Former member of the ZALORA founding team and C-Suite executive, Giulio Xiloyannis, Co-Founder of LiquidX, will be the CEO of Pixelmon, while Kendrick Wong, Co-Founder and Chairman of LiquidX, will adopt an advisory role focused on tokenomics, treasury management, and partnership-building. Martin van Blerk, Pixelmon’s original founder, will be a non-controlling shareholder with an appointed representative on the Pixelmon board of directors.
LiquidX is a strong believer in Pixelmon’s potential and long-term vision, to the extent that one of its two co-founders, Giulio Xiloyannis, decided to take a full operational role within the company to personally oversee Pixelmon game production and turnaround process.
Pixelmon’s new and expanded studio team includes veterans from Blizzard Entertainment, Garena, Microsoft, Riot Games, Streamline Studios, and Ubisoft. The team is also working in partnership with external studios including BrightNode, Kevuru Games Studios, Magic Media, Starloop Studios, Two AM Music Global, and Ultra Factory.
Giulio Xiloyannis, CEO of Pixelmon, said, “For the next 12 to 24 months, Pixelmon has one goal: to develop the highest quality Free-to-Play and Play-to-Own game in the NFT and metaverse space. Our North Star to create the industry standard for web3 gaming.”
“I firmly believe that over time we will be able to build Pixelmon into one of the strongest IPs in the gaming and web3 spaces, spanning across an ecosystem of entertainment-related assets. These assets will be interconnected and interoperable thanks to NFT technology. Gamers will be able to port characters, abilities and skins across the ecosystem, and NFT holders will be able to benefit from the performance of all assets,” he continued.
The refreshed MMORPG will allow players to obtain a direct stake in its in-game ecosystem through a Play-to-Own (P2O) model, although the Pixelmon metaverse will remain free for anyone to access and play with optional Pay-to-Play (P2P) mechanics. The game will initially be accessible via PC and mobile, eventually evolving into a multichannel experience available on more platforms down the road. When connected to a blockchain network, in-game assets and characters – including land, tools, skins, serums, weapons, and Pixelmons – will be transferable and tradeable outside the Pixelmon servers.
Pixelmon will adopt a dual token-based economy with a main utility token acting as the ecosystem’s currency to enable players to own, trade, and participate in game development. All future tokens will be hosted on a Layer-2 blockchain compatible with Ethereum Mainnet.
Generation 1: New Beginnings in Nova Thera
L – R: Vulcanos, Boremon, Luna
Generation 1 Pixelmon NFTs encompass 68 genesis playable species and over 130 unique evolutions in the roadmap. All species will start at Evolution 1 and have the ability to evolve through serums, training, and other experiences. Generation 1 NFTs are a limited drop and will no longer be attainable or encounterable after the first genesis collection.
Xiloyannis said, “Developing interactive and compelling artwork is at the heart of building a game players will want to build and engage with. A particularly ambitious undertaking Pixelmon has committed to is making all our NFTs fully 3D and animated as high polygon art. While the vast majority of NFT projects animate only the top one percent of characters, everything in the Pixelmon collections — from the environment to evolutionary serums — will be animated for a truly immersive experience.”
Generation 1 NFT holders will also gain exclusive access to an airdrop of land in the Pixelmon world, Nova Thera. This gives them full ownership of the allocated space with the ability to extract resources or in-game yields by staking the land to participate in the game’s economy of resources and services. Other playable experiences include engaging in tournaments — both individually and in teams — interacting at social hubs, playing mini games, exchanging assets, and building collective infrastructure. By exploring the open and ever-expanding world of Nova Thera, players can find, catch, and train Pixelmons, engage in themed quests, as well as collect corresponding resources and prizes.
More details on the Pixelmon metaverse and its game mechanics can be found in Appendices A and C.
The roadmap ahead
L – R: Evolution 1 Serum; Example of Nova Thera Landscape
Generation 1 NFTs and evolutionary serums are now available for purchase on secondary markets such as OpenSea, while Evolution 2 characters and Evolution 3 serums will be unveiled in Q4 2022. The game’s Alpha Launch is scheduled for Q1 2023, but will be kept exclusively to its NFT holder community until the full Public Launch in late 2023.
Immediate plans post-Alpha Launch include the release of the Pixelmon utility token and the game’s first land distribution. Further details can be found in the official roadmap and documented in the official Pixelmon Whitepaper, which will be released in Q4 2022.
APPENDIX A: Journey into the Pixelmon Metaverse
Hatching
All Pixelmon NFTs begin their on-chain existence in an ‘unhatched’ state. Every NFT holder has the choice of ‘hatching’ their Pixelmon to reveal which one they own. To do this, holders must visit the Pixelmon hatching page and sign a transaction, triggering the metadata reveal. This entire process is gasless.
L – R: Example of unhatched Pixelmon; Air Pixelmon character (Luna); Fire Pixelmon character, (Vulcanos)
Characters
There are four possible origins for any Pixelmon — Fire, Water, Earth, and Air — corresponding to tribes that occupy particular regions of the Pixelmon metaverse. Each species is also associated with a rarity tier (common > uncommon > rare > epic > legendary > mythical). There is a limit on the number of each Generation 1 species that will ever exist. For instance, the most common species (eg. Droot and Arachni) are capped at 300, while there are only 25 of the rarest species (elemental dragons).
Generation 1 Pixelmon are a limited drop possessing unique qualities, and will no longer be attainable or encounterable after the first genesis collection. Future generations will only be accessible in-game and reach secondary NFT markets only after players obtain them in-game. For more information, please refer to the zoology entry for each Pixelmon, which provides comprehensive information on each species’ origin, rarity, size, and way of life.
Training
Pixelmon training will follow a process similar to soft-lock staking. Soft-locking means that an NFT is not transferred to a smart contract, allowing its owner to have complete access to it at all times. If the holding address of a Pixelmon NFT changes at any point during the training process (via buying, selling, or transferring), training progress will be reset, and the Pixelmon will need to be soft-locked again via the new wallet. Following 14 days of training, Pixelmon NFTs will be upgraded with animations, and after 28 days, it will upgrade a second time, receiving auditory enhancements.
Example of character evolution
Evolution
Pixelmon evolution is possible through two mechanisms: Serum Burn and Pixelmon Burn.
Serum Burn evolution allows players to obtain the next evolution of a particular Pixelmon as an NFT whilst retaining their original NFT. For instance, to mint an Evolution 2 Pixelmon NFT, the player must hold a one-time-use Evolution 2 Serum NFT and an Evolution 1 Pixelmon NFT that has not previously been used to mint an Evolution 2 Pixelmon NFT.
For Generation 1, there will only ever be 4,013 Evolution 2 serums (1,805 released at this stage), 1,206 Evolution 3 serums (to be released), and 33 Evolution 4 serums (to be released). The majority of these serums will be earnable in-game via events and battles.
Pixelmon Burn is obtainable after a Pixelmon has accumulated a certain amount of playing or staking time. Under this mechanism, the player will have to ‘burn’ the original Pixelmon to obtain its next evolution stage, thus only retaining an NFT of the latter.
Land
Land NFTs will be split between urban (yield) and peripheric (resources extraction) types, made available in a variety of configurations and sizes. A third category called ‘regions’ will be released as the game grows, allowing for creators to expand the map itself.
Token Model
Pixelmon will feature both a utility token — the game’s core medium of exchange — and a governance token — likely to be launched in the second stage of the project to facilitate the day-to-day operations of four in-game tribes run as Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs).
The utility token has a capped total supply; through a combination of minting, issuance, burnings, and buyback mechanisms it enables trades, staking, and in-game exchanges. Tokens can be earned in a variety of ways, including through competitions, leaderboard periodic prizes, themed events, battles, and selling off NFTs.
APPENDIX B: Executive Bios
About Giulio Xiloyannis
Giulio Xiloyannis is the CEO of Pixelmon and Co-Founder of LiquidX, a web3 studio for the metaverse and the world’s first NFT projects aggregator.
A key member of the ZALORA founding team, Giulio served as Chief Executive Officer for multiple markets, before leading the entire Southeast Asian group of companies in their pre-IPO phase as Chief Commercial Officer, wrapping up his decade-long tenure in 2018.
An angel investor since 2014, Giulio has invested in over two dozen companies alongside other co-investors such as Amber Group, Binance, Sequoia, Tiger Global, and more. As a pioneer venture capitalist in the emerging NFT and Web3 gaming space, Giulio holds executive advisory positions in multiple up-and-coming projects initiated by established developers and gaming studios.
Giulio firmly believes that gaming companies are uniquely poised to build the infrastructure for a truly social metaverse. He is of the opinion that the tokenisation of digital assets like NFTs will be the key underlying technology driving this exponential 3D asset growth in the metaworld, merging gaming, social media experiences, as well as the decentralised creator economy into one massive industry.
Giulio started his career in JP Morgan’s investment banking division before joining Rocket Internet. He is currently an appointed advisor and mentor to Antler, the world’s largest global accelerator; as well as Nana Bianca an Italian accelerator; and Magic, the Malaysian-government led accelerator; providing counsel for ventures across the web2 and web3 space.
About Kendrick Wong
Kendrick Wong is Chairman and Co-Founder of LiquidX, a web3 studio for the metaverse and the world’s first NFT projects aggregator. He is also CEO and Managing Partner of Alpha CW, a USD 200M fund focused on blockchain, NFTs, and Southeast Asian unicorns, that counts GoTo and Stripe as portfolio companies.
Hailing from a family of entrepreneurs with startup experience across Europe and Southeast Asia, Kendrick was featured in Forbes’ 2019 Asia 30 Under 30 and is an Amazon Web Services Super Angel.
An active investor in the region, Kendrick co-runs a private equity firm investing in startups, venture capital funds, and blockchain companies within Southeast Asia in addition to conducting traditional investments for a family office.
APPENDIX C: Your Guide to Pixelmon and Nova Thera
About Pixelmon
Pixelmon is an MMORPG metaverse designed for web3. Backed by LiquidX, a web3 VC and NFT aggregator, Pixelmon aims to build the highest quality Free-to-Play and Play-to-Own game in the NFT and metaverse space to emerge a Top 10 MMORPG globally.
With the goal of setting the industry standard for web3 gaming, Pixelmon will develop a new asset class of interoperable NFTs – from avatars, characters, skins, tools and more – that will be transferable and tradeable across the entire Ethereum Layer-1 blockchain.
Pixelmon currently has over 30,000 active community members and more than 7,000 aggregate NFT holders since LiquidX assumed a fully operational role in game development, in Q3 2022. The game’s Alpha Launch is scheduled for Q1 2023 before its full Public Launch in H2 2023.
For more information, please visit https://www.pixelmon.ai/.
About LiquidX
LiquidX is a web3 venture capital studio for the metaverse. The world’s first NFT projects aggregator, LiquidX goes beyond capital investments to take a direct role in building sustainable blockchain infrastructure for the entire NFT ecosystem to accelerate its evolution into an asset class.
Backed by a team of web2 pioneers that developed a generation of startup unicorns and some of Southeast Asia’s earliest blockchain adopters and veterans, LiquidX functions as an active investor, acquirer, and operator, helping family offices and private equity funds diversify into web3.
LiquidX specialises in creating long-term value for NFT holders by building unique gaming and community experiences. By combining superior graphics and storylines with top-notch blockchain technologies, tokenomics, and treasury management, LiquidX aims to enable NFT holders to become the first mass adopters of the metaverse.
For more information, please visit: https://www.liquidxgroup.xyz/
Media Contact
Louise Lam
Wachsman for Pixelmon
