Former Pudgy Penguins co-founder sells out NFT collection in dramatic return

Cole Villemain, the Pudgy Penguins co-founder who holders voted out in 2022 over accusations that the team drained the project’s treasury, has sold out a 44,444-piece NFT collection on Robinhood Chain.

On-chain observer @0xmani reports that the collection was sold for more than 684 ETH (roughly $1.28 million).

Is Cole Villemain running an NFT scam?

Cole Villemain, who posts as ColeThereum on X, announced that he has sold out his 44,444-piece NFT collection called Spritehood Wisps with a two-line message reading: “Sold out. I’m back in the NFT game.”

Some traders, like @CryptoGorilla, pointed out that the mint was promoted as a “free mint” but ended up being a “stealth launch” that cost money to join. Others, like user HanIsRich, called the project a “cashgrab,” arguing that the promised future development wouldn’t cost nearly 20% of the money raised.

Gorilla stopped short of calling it a scam, noting that the floor had climbed 2.6 times off its minimum and that rare pieces were changing hands as high as 0.88 ETH.

The collection was listed under the creator name Spritehoodio, and traded on OpenSea with a floor price of $35.21 as of publication.

OpenSea data shows 4,074 unique owners across the 44,444 tokens, meaning a single holder controls roughly 9 out of every 10 pieces on average. Only 5.2% of the supply is listed for sale, and 24-hour volume stood at $781,000 with a top collection offer of $32.42.

Villemain built the drop on Robinhood Chain rather than Ethereum. The brokerage launched that network on July 1, 2026, as a place for tokenized stocks and U.S. Treasuries, but memecoins overran it instead.

In its first few weeks, Robinhood Chain documented wallet drainers, phishing pages, and rug-pulls spreading across it.

What was the Pudgy Penguins co-founder accused of?

In August 2021, blockchain investigator ZachXBT profiled Villemain’s pre-crypto dropshipping site, eBoy Outlet, describing its reviews as full of customers who never got orders, refunds, or support responses. Villemain denied wrongdoing and said he refunded buyers who did not receive goods.

Villemain also launched a prior NFT collection, My Fucking Pickle. Its floor now sits at $13, down 98% from a June 2021 high above $540.

“Have to love cash grab projects,” ZachXBT wrote at the time.

Reacting to the new drop, one developer wrote on X saying that Cole was the “same guy who did early meme NFT cash grabs” and that “half of Crypto Twitter is acting like none of that ever happened.”

Pudgy Penguins, which Villemain cofounded, launched in July 2021 as a set of 8,888 cartoon penguin avatars on Ethereum, minting at 0.03 ETH and going on to total $145 million in OpenSea volume.

On January 5, 2022, an investor alleged that the founders had emptied the collection’s ETH treasury. Holders voted the founders out through a Discord poll the next day, and Villemain stepped back from X, citing “mental health.”

By April 2022, the individuals left in the team sold Pudgy Penguins to a group led by Los Angeles entrepreneur Luca Netz for 750 ETH, worth about $2.5 million then. Netz later turned the brand into one for physical toys that have moved more than a million units through Walmart, Target, and Walgreens.