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CryptoPokemons(PokemonToken)

nft
0x0063f8d3537e...3e0ee63a8f4a
ByzantiumExact Bytecode MatchEdit this contract
Deployed March 29, 2018 (8 years ago)Block 5,340,002

March 2018 hot-potato NFT featuring 25 Gen-1 Pokémon.

Byzantium EraVerified Source

Historical Significance

An early Ethereum NFT collectible from the brief CryptoKitties-imitator wave of early 2018, distinguished mostly by its choice of theme (the 25 Gen-1 starter Pokémon) and by how little ever happened on it: exactly one purchase, on Squirtle, in its entire on-chain life. The complete 25-token launch set has been acquired and wrapped for permanent preservation, paired with primary-source documentation (Reddit announcement, The Merkle coverage, archived site) of the project as it appeared in April 2018.

Context

The launch. All 25 Pokémon were minted in a single burst from 0xc695a3281bf84f53116cd5ddc93457dc88f443b7 on the night of March 28–29, 2018 UTC, via 25 sequential createPromoPokemon calls. The site at cryptopokemons.com went live around the same time, featuring what appear to be original illustrations of the 25 characters. The project was announced publicly on r/CryptoCurrency on April 3 (u/skylarbeaudette, post id 89igv6) and covered by The Merkle on April 5 ("What Is CryptoPokemons?"). The Reddit thread received 13 comments and closed with a score of 0 (upvote ratio 0.43).

A single trade. The contract's purchase(uint256) function — the hot-potato mechanic at the heart of the game — was successfully invoked exactly once. On March 29, 2018 at 09:14 UTC, the address 0x6002fdbca9da651a3bdf22b4e36fe9bf26c3c8ac (which had been funded with 0.0104 ETH by the deployer two hours earlier) bought Squirtle for 0.01 ETH. No other Pokémon ever changed hands through purchase(), and that one buyer never bought anything else either.

The deployer. 0xc695a3281bf84f53116cd5ddc93457dc88f443b7 is an EOA with nonce 28, no ENS, no public tags, no other deployed contracts, funded by another unlabeled EOA. Active for exactly 32 days (March 28 → April 29, 2018), then dormant. The Reddit announcer u/skylarbeaudette uses "we" in their replies (consistent with a small team) but no cryptographic link between the Reddit account and the on-chain deployer has been established.

Token Information
Token Name
CryptoPokemons
Symbol
PokemonToken
Key Facts
Deployment Block
5,340,002
Deployment Date
Mar 29, 2018, 12:15 AM
Code Size
8.4 KB
Gas at Deploy
2,460,486
Transactions by Year
201826
202625

Description

CryptoPokemons is a "hot-potato" collectible game on Ethereum, deployed late March 2018. It mints exactly 25 ERC-721-draft tokens, one for each of the original Generation-1 starter Pokémon: Bulbasaur (#0), Ivysaur, Venusaur, Charmander, Charmeleon, Charizard, Squirtle, Wartortle, Blastoise, Caterpie, Butterfree, Weedle, Kakuna, Beedrill, Pidgey, Pidgeotto, Metapod, Rattata, Raticate, Spearow, Fearow, Ekans, Arbok, Pikachu, Raichu (#24). Each name is stored on-chain in the token's struct.

The hot-potato mechanic. Anyone can take a Pokémon from its current owner at any time by calling purchase(uint256) and paying the current sellingPrice. The contract keeps a 4.5% dev fee and forwards 95.5% to the previous owner. After every forced sale the price ratchets up: 3.0× while the price is below 0.1 ETH, 2.0× up to 0.4 ETH, 1.25× up to 1.0 ETH, and 1.15× beyond. The starting price for every Pokémon is 0.01 ETH.

Lineage. A fork of the CelebrityToken (CryptoCelebrities) template, with a fourth pricing stage added, a lower 4.5% dev fee, and a per-token txs field exposed via getPokemon(uint256) and the TokenSold event.

Announcement and coverage. Announced on Reddit on April 3, 2018 by u/skylarbeaudette (Reddit "Developer" flair) in r/CryptoCurrency, with the title "CryptoPokemons - new Ethereum blockchain collectible game (child of CryptoKitties)" and a direct link to cryptopokemons.com. The Merkle covered the launch two days later in an article titled "What Is CryptoPokemons?" (April 5, 2018). The original site featured what appear to be original illustrations of the 25 Pokémon characters.

On-chain activity. Almost none. The deployer (0xc695a3281bf84f53116cd5ddc93457dc88f443b7) minted all 25 tokens via 25 calls to createPromoPokemon on March 28–29, 2018. Exactly one purchase() was ever called in the contract's life: Squirtle (#6) on March 29, 2018 at 0.01 ETH, by an address the deployer had funded 0.0104 ETH a few hours earlier. No other token has ever changed hands via the hot-potato mechanism. The deployer made their last on-chain action on April 29, 2018 — 32 days after deployment — and never returned to this contract or deployed another.

Preservation (May 2026). All 25 Pokémon have been acquired and wrapped into WrappedCryptoPokemons at 0x30982eF551EA4583857578f3B28018aEfECf7F9C by cart00n.eth — an ERC-721 wrapper with on-chain JSON metadata, owner-only unwrap for future migration, and a deliberately one-way wrap that retires the hot-potato purchase() flow. The domain cryptopokemons.com has been acquired for restoration; the original site is preserved on the Wayback Machine at https://web.archive.org/web/20181031225133/cryptopokemons.com/.

Source Verified

SolidityExact bytecode match(8,567 bytes)
Compiler: 0.4.18+

Reconstructed from CelebrityToken template (CryptoCelebrities fork). Runtime + creation bytecode byte-identical to on-chain except for source metadata swarm hash (partial match in pre-v2 Sourcify terminology). Verified on Sourcify v2 (full match flag).. Optimizer: OFF

Historian Categories

NFT / Collectible
Heuristic Analysis

The following characteristics were detected through bytecode analysis and may not be accurate.

Detected Type: nft

Bytecode Overview

Opcodes8,567
Unique Opcodes236
Jump Instructions395
Storage Operations118

External Links