Non-fungible token (NFT) company Pixel Vault is under fire for its involvement in what appears to be a roughly $3.5 million rug pull scheme involving its founder and former CEO. In the latest turn of events, the company announced<\/a> on Wednesday that it has removed Sean Gearin, also known as GFunk, from his position as CEO. The project did not provide details about the alleged rug pull, but stated that the now ex-CEO\u2019s \u201cactions are under review.\u201d <\/p>\n GFunk has been accused by multiple NFT community commentators and former partners on X of misleading investors for personal profit. Specifically, GFunk allegedly encouraged investors to to rotate the ecosystem\u2019s PUNKS token \u2014 which represents fractionalized ownership in Pixel Vault’s CryptoPunks collection \u2014 into a new token, dubbed GG. The capital rotation occurred between when GG launched in December 2023, and up to the time of the auction<\/a> of the company\u2019s CryptoPunks collection in 2025. GG is the official token of RebootGG, which is under the Pixel Vault ecosystem umbrella. <\/p>\n Simultaneously, GFunk allegedly accumulated large amounts of PUNKS, just in time for the company\u2019s CryptoPunks vault to be auctioned off for 930 ETH, or $3.4 million, on June 5, leaving GFunk personally with a significant amount of the proceeds. <\/p>\n CryptoPunks valuation tool PunkPredictor claimed<\/a> that the auction lot was worth closer to 950 ETH at the time.<\/p>\n One NFT collector, known as Rodo, slammed<\/a> the former CEO in an X post over the weekend, stating \u201cGFunk pulled off one of the most blatant rugs I\u2019ve seen in a while.\u201d <\/p>\n Rodo went on to list their allegations against GFunk, including that the CEO had \u201craised hundreds of millions with Pixelvault,\u201d tricked users into moving funds from PUNKS into GG, and that he was \u201csilently auctioning the punks vault[.]\u201d But, Rodo noted, investors took notice. <\/p>\n When onlookers called out GFunk for what appeared to be nefarious behavior with the vault auction, Rodo claims that the Pixel Vault CEO promised that \u201cproceeds will be used to build the ecosystem,\u201d before proceeding to shut down operations, claiming to be hacked, and going dark on social media. <\/p>\n GFunk\u2019s most recent X post is from June 22.<\/p>\n Other NFT OGs have been quick to join the public shaming. Beanie, another anonymous, but notable, collector, had been involved with Pixel Vault before a public falling out with GFunk, which resulted in the team removing him from operations. <\/p>\n Beanie called out not just GFunk, but also NFT lending platform GONDI, for participation in the scheme. In a post on July 28, he accused<\/a> the NFT platform of creating a private PUNKS loan prior to the vault auction. Beanie alleged:<\/p>\n \u201cIt was done so Gfunk (a Gondi Advisor) could borrow ETH against PUNKS tokens. The collateral used included tokens from the PUNKS staking contract. This enabled Gfunk to get funds to run up the bid.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Beanie\u2019s statement implies that GFunk not only misled investors to make money off the sale of the auction, but also leveraged his advisory role to run up the auction itself. <\/p>\n It is worth noting that Pixel Vault was publicly bidding<\/a> on the collection at below the auction lot\u2019s market value, which may imply fair play and transparent practices in the auction bidding process.<\/p>\n Pixel Vault is known for creating the Punks Comics ecosystem, and the project raised<\/a> $100 million for developing NFT infrastructure in 2022, in addition to funds accrued from its multiple collection mints.<\/p>\nCommunity Response<\/h2>\n
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