Apymon Rug Pull

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Apymon

The Apymon project created artistic NFT eggs which hatched into monsters and could be used to store other items. However, the lead developer was not interested in the success of the project and left with a significant amount of ethereum. Other members of the team came together to rebuild with limited funds, and plan to relaunch fully as Apymon Revolution.

This is a global/international case not involving a specific country.

About Apymon

"Welcome to Apymon; a decentralized NFT-based collectors experience built on the Ethereum network. Apymon are lab-grown creatures made by beings from another dimension who experiment with the DNA of all creatures they encounter such as Apes, Aliens, Cats and more. Apymon are contained within egg-shaped artifacts, with no creature or egg being the same. The supply is limited at 6400 Genesis Eggs."

"[E]verything started right around April 13th-which was kind of the beginning of Apymon, and then as I go through the announcements, it very quickly gets into a massive number of giveaways and then the launch on the 30th."

"Apymon Revolution is a collection of 6400 procedurally designed eggs created by AI. What makes these Genesis Eggs special is that they are the healing pod for your Warriors after they Battle in the Apymon Revolution Game (In Design Phase). They can also hold other NFTs, ERC20 and ERC1155 tokens, making them function as your personal vault. No two Apymon Genesis Eggs are the same, each one is unique and crafted with love."

"Apymon, an NFT egg project released in March 2021, have been surprising users with their egg-citing content. Apymon are lab grown critters created by a race of inter-dimensional DNA manipulators. A total of 6400 unique eggs exist, all of which have already been sold out and are now only available on OpenSea."

"Each egg is essentially a two-tier NFT with an outer shell and an inner monster. The outer section consists of a procedurally designed egg-shaped artifact. The inner section displays the creature inhabiting the egg. Of these animals, AI generated 2D images (Rare) make up the majority (6,388), and homo sapien designed 3D animated creatures make up the remaining 12 (Legendary)."

"The egg itself is a rudimentary crypto wallet, used for storing ERC20 tokens as well as NFTs. Allowing trading directly from the egg. The eggs also have a programmable time-lock, which could come in useful…for something."

"As well as the NFT offering, additional high-value items have been randomly concealed within the eggs. These items include a Cryptopunk worth over 20 ETH, an original Beeple artwork and $80,000 worth of $ETH tokens."

"If you are already an egg owner, make sure to keep an eye on Apymon’s rebate where they will be putting 1 ETH in 80 eggs. One of them might be yours!"

"Another rug pull event hit the relatively popular Apymon project. Users were sold egg NFTs that could also be used as a sort of vault to store other things in them. The project was plagued with several issues including an early attempt of someone involved in stealing ultra-rare eggs. The person was not booted from the project – and as it turned out, they were ultimately the ones who ran away with an unknown amount of ETH worth several hundred thousands of dollars, leaving the moderators and community members who bought the eggs with little to nothing, other than egg NFTs that they couldn’t access anymore."

"Happy Magic has essentially disappeared. He’s deleted his profile from Discord and he’s gone! He’s probably the real villain here. I think Archie is just, I’m not sure what’s up with Archie. Emotionally, he seems to be erratic, and I don’t know if I’d say unstable, but Happy Magic was gifting himself two of the eggs on random reveal, then the contract being exploited as they were loading it up with prizes and everybody started to see where the referral ETH (etherium) was, where the 80 WETH in 1 WETH prizes. THEN the Punk was stolen. So, all of that, I think, put Archie mentally in a place where I think he wanted to step away and, you know, he disappeared for a month, left Happy at the reins, and it was a pretty brutal month for our community. It was tough because I was doing my best to stand up for them, not knowing that they were going to pull the rug, and then when they did, you know, it was pretty tough to digest. So Happy’s the real villain, and Archie has given us some funding, little by little. I’ve been able to extract some willingness for him to give us some funding."

"Napkin math suggests that they earned ~860 ETH ($2,277,280 at today’s price) in egg sales. They gave out maybe 25% of that in gifts and prizes inside the eggs. The rest of the money was meant to be spent on creating the creatures and delivering on the promises made to the community in their road map." "Happy got away with approximately $1.6 million."

"Somewhat unusually for a rug pull project, however, Apymon wasn’t then abandoned – the community took ownership of what assets they could, and a new team formed to try and salvage what was left." "{w]e started with about $90,000 in funding, we got the bulk of that from him (Archie), and 5 ETH from dingaling, who’s a pretty big whale in the NFT space."

"The project was rebranded as Apymon:Revolution, and while it by no means recovered the severe damage the rug pull caused, it continues to have over a thousand investors that are sticking with the project. It’s too soon to say whether the attempted save will work – but Apymon seems to indicate that a scam isn’t necessarily the death of a project… or at least not of every project that suffers this fate."

"Before we go into those details, we would like to acknowledge that it has been a long road to get to this point, with a lot of emotion and turbulence along the way. The old team is no longer with the project and have left us with minimal funding and missing pieces to the puzzle. I won’t go into much detail on that here, as most of you know the events that transpired and that the 2 previous founders did not have the community’s best interest in mind at the end of the day." "[W]e’d like to thank you all, the Revolution, for your continued support and comradery during the redesign and launching of this project. We know it is a slow burn and we’re working as quickly as we can while maintaining the quality we’ve promised on the budget we have to work with."

"We have the new website relaunch coming, the contracts being written and all the pieces of the puzzle coming together. Once we begin final rendering the 6404 Warriors in a few weeks, we will also begin working with our Artists to design and render the Weapons. Those will be distributed through giveaways and sales events that will be staggered to not saturate the market too fast too soon. Once we can secure funding via these sales and OpenSea royalties, we will be able to begin working on the Beta Game design. We’re also in talks with a couple of Metaverse projects to collaborate and build out an Apymon space and we’re super excited about that! There will be some time required for rigging, but that is also something we’re looking to have done in the 1stQ of 2022, if all things go as planned. A lot of work to do, but we’re committed to getting the job done and delivering value at every stage, from product design to implementation."

“We will not forget the past, rather we will learn from it and build the new army of unstoppable Warriors full of passion and drive to right the wrongs and deliver on promises made long ago. Today, we start anew as Apymon: Revolution!!”

This is a global/international case not involving a specific country.

The background of the exchange platform, service, or individuals involved, as it would have been seen or understood at the time of the events.

Include:

• Known history of when and how the service was started.
• What problems does the company or service claim to solve?
• What marketing materials were used by the firm or business?
• Audits performed, and excerpts that may have been included.
• Business registration documents shown (fake or legitimate).
• How were people recruited to participate?
• Public warnings and announcements prior to the event.

Don't Include:

• Any wording which directly states or implies that the business is/was illegitimate, or that a vulnerability existed.
• Anything that wasn't reasonably knowable at the time of the event.

There could be more than one section here. If the same platform is involved with multiple incidents, then it can be linked to a main article page.

The Reality

This sections is included if a case involved deception or information that was unknown at the time. Examples include:

• When the service was actually started (if different than the "official story").
• Who actually ran a service and their own personal history.
• How the service was structured behind the scenes. (For example, there was no "trading bot".)
• Details of what audits reported and how vulnerabilities were missed during auditing.

What Happened

The specific events of the loss and how it came about. What actually happened to cause the loss and some of the events leading up to it.

Key Event Timeline - Apymon Rug Pull

Date	Event	Description
June 3rd, 2021	Main Event	Expand this into a brief description of what happened and the impact. If multiple lines are necessary, add them here.

Technical Details

This section includes specific detailed technical analysis of any security breaches which happened. What specific software vulnerabilities contributed to the problem and how were they exploited?

Total Amount Lost

The total amount lost has been estimated at $2,277,000 USD.

How much was lost and how was it calculated? If there are conflicting reports, which are accurate and where does the discrepancy lie?

Immediate Reactions

How did the various parties involved (firm, platform, management, and/or affected individual(s)) deal with the events? Were services shut down? Were announcements made? Were groups formed?

Ultimate Outcome

What was the end result? Was any investigation done? Were any individuals prosecuted? Was there a lawsuit? Was any tracing done?

Total Amount Recovered

There do not appear to have been any funds recovered in this case.

What funds were recovered? What funds were reimbursed for those affected users?

Ongoing Developments

What parts of this case are still remaining to be concluded?

General Prevention Policies

Holding funds in multi-sig wallets with all keys held by reputable and known individuals would have prevented this situation.

Individual Prevention Policies

No specific policies for individual prevention have yet been identified in this case.

For the full list of how to protect your funds as an individual, check our Prevention Policies for Individuals guide.

Platform Prevention Policies

Policies for platforms to take to prevent this situation have not yet been selected in this case.

For the full list of how to protect your funds as a financial service, check our Prevention Policies for Platforms guide.

Regulatory Prevention Policies

No specific regulatory policies have yet been identified in this case.

For the full list of regulatory policies that can prevent loss, check our Prevention Policies for Regulators guide.