Spritehood has sold 42,956 paid NFTs on Robinhood Chain in about 53 minutes, generating nearly $1.28 million for Pudgy Penguins co-founder Cole Villemain.
Spritehood $NFT sale reached $1.28 million
The Defiant reported that Villemain launched Spritehood on Aug. 11 after previously being removed from the founding team of Pudgy Penguins, with the paid portion of the sale selling out in less than one hour.
On-chain analyst 0xlaplaced calculated that the mint generated about $1.2829 million, or approximately 684.28 $ETH, based on the price of Ether during the sale. The final total came in well above an earlier estimate of roughly $755,000 that circulated before the mint had finished.
According to the analyst’s transaction review, buyers minted 37,430 NFTs for $17 each, producing $636,310 in proceeds. A second group of 5,526 NFTs sold for $117 each, adding another $646,542.
Combined, the two paid tiers generated $1,282,852 from 42,956 tokens. The deploying address had already distributed 1,488 NFTs at no charge through 20 zero-price transactions before the public sale, taking the full reported supply to 44,444 items.
Although the available figures show how many tokens moved at each price, the supplied report did not identify what determined whether a buyer paid $17 or $117. It also did not provide details about any benefits, future access, or other features attached to the collection.
Unverified code limits review of Spritehood’s mint
Spritehood’s contract appears with an “unverified” label on Robinhood Chain’s Blockscout explorer, according to The Defiant. An unverified contract can still operate and record transactions on-chain, but its human-readable source code has not been matched publicly with the deployed bytecode through the explorer.
Without that verification, buyers cannot use Blockscout to inspect the complete source code governing Spritehood’s pricing and distribution process. The label does not establish that the contract is malicious or faulty, though it reduces the information available for independent review through the explorer.
The reported mint figures instead come from an analysis of completed blockchain transactions. Since every paid tier can be calculated separately, the on-chain totals explain why the final proceeds exceeded the figure shared while the sale was still underway.
No information in the supplied report indicates that Robinhood organized, promoted or endorsed the Spritehood launch. Robinhood describes its network as a permissionless Ethereum Layer 2, meaning independent developers can deploy applications and tokens without each project representing an official Robinhood product.
Robinhood Chain has attracted speculative assets
Spritehood arrived about six weeks after Robinhood opened its Layer 2 network to the public. As crypto.news reported in July, Robinhood Chain launched as an Arbitrum-based Ethereum scaling network designed for tokenized stocks and decentralized finance applications.
The mainnet debuted with integrations involving infrastructure providers, including Alchemy, BitGo, and Chainlink. Robinhood also introduced Stock Tokens for eligible users outside the United States, while decentralized exchanges and lending applications supplied on-chain trading functions.
Despite its stated focus on financial assets, permissionless deployment has allowed unrelated tokens and speculative projects to enter the network. A July network review found that memecoin trading had become a major source of early activity, even though Robinhood built the chain around tokenized equities and real-world assets.
The network’s early activity also produced a gap between trading volume and available liquidity. Another July analysis found $570 million in launch-week trading volume against $21.68 million in liquidity, with incentive-backed decentralized finance deposits and speculative tokens driving much of the activity.
More recent figures cited by Bitmine Chairman Tom Lee placed Robinhood Chain’s cumulative decentralized exchange volume near $9 billion. Lee said the chain could expose Robinhood’s 27 million customers to Ethereum-based services, although the figure represented the company’s funded customer base rather than confirmed users of the blockchain.
$ETH functions as Robinhood Chain’s native gas token, while network transactions settle through Ethereum. Buyers therefore need $ETH to pay transaction fees when directly using applications deployed on the chain, including $NFT contracts such as Spritehood.
Pudgy Penguins history follows Villemain’s new mint
Villemain, also known online as ColeThereum, helped create Pudgy Penguins with three other founders in 2021. The original collection contained 8,888 penguin profile-picture NFTs and sold out shortly after launch.
An earlier Pudgy Penguins history published by crypto.news said the initial mint priced the NFTs at about $90 each and generated more than $800,000. The collection later became one of the most recognized projects from the $NFT market’s 2021 expansion.
Pudgy Penguins holders voted Villemain out of the founding team in January 2022. The removal followed community allegations that he had misused project funds and failed to deliver on parts of the project’s roadmap.
The claims remained allegations, and the supplied report said Villemain was not prosecuted over them. Entrepreneur Luca Netz later acquired control of the Pudgy Penguins brand in April 2022 for 750 $ETH, taking over its leadership after the original team’s removal.
Under its new ownership, the project expanded beyond blockchain collectibles into physical toys, licensing deals, and the PENGU token. Pudgy Penguins has also continued to register periods of high secondary-market activity, including a 247% weekly sales increase to $9.3 million in July 2025.
What the Spritehood sale means for US buyers
Robinhood is a U.S.-listed brokerage, but use of its public blockchain does not mean an $NFT carries Robinhood’s approval or the protections attached to a brokerage account. The company’s official disclosures describe Robinhood Chain as a permissionless and separate blockchain from its regulated financial services.
For U.S. buyers, the tax treatment of $NFT purchases also differs from buying assets inside a standard brokerage account. The Internal Revenue Service treats digital assets as property, and its guidance requires taxpayers to report taxable gains or losses when cryptocurrency is sold, exchanged or used to acquire property, including an $NFT.
Paying for a Spritehood $NFT with $ETH may therefore create a taxable disposal for a U.S. buyer if the Ether changed in value between acquisition and use. Any later sale of the $NFT may produce another reportable gain or loss based on the difference between its cost basis and sale proceeds.
Federal securities treatment depends on the economic facts surrounding an offering rather than the $NFT label alone. In 2023, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Impact Theory over an $NFT offering that raised about $30 million, while Stoner Cats 2 agreed to settle charges tied to an $8 million $NFT sale.
Neither the supplied report nor the cited on-chain review said a U.S. regulator had examined Spritehood or alleged that its NFTs were securities. The report also did not identify any passive-income rights, revenue-sharing terms, or promises of returns attached to the collection.
