Pudgy Penguins is just one step away from catching up with CryptoPunks.
Author: Leek, Foresight News
According to OpenSea data on December 16, the floor price of the Pudgy Penguins NFT series has broken through 34 ETH, currently at 34.2 ETH (about $137,000), with a 24-hour increase of 22.5%. Its sub-series NFT Lil Pudgys has also broken through 4 ETH, currently at 4.24 ETH (about $17,000), with a 24-hour increase of 20.9%.
It is worth noting that the Pudgy Penguins series has seen an amazing surge in this bull market. OpenSea data shows that its floor price has risen from around 11 ETH to 34 ETH in the past month, equivalent to about 980,000 RMB, and its market value has reached 300,000 ETH, which is about $1.19 billion as of the time of writing.
Source: OpenSea
With the arrival of the cryptocurrency bull market, various sectors have started to rotate, and the NFT sector is also slowly starting up.
On December 6, the blue-chip NFT project Pudgy Penguins announced that it will release its token PENGU by 2024. The total supply is 8.888 billion, and it will be launched on the Solana chain. Igloo, the parent company of Pudgy Penguins, also stated that in addition to launching on Solana, the PENGU token plans to adopt multi-chain, including launching on Ethereum and Abstract.
In terms of specific allocation, 25.9% of the tokens will be distributed to the Pudgy community, 24.13% to other communities, 12.35% for liquidity, 11.48% to partners (partially unlocked after 1 year of lockup, and linearly unlocked over 3 years), 17.8% to the team, 4% for public sale, 0.35% to FTT holders, and 4% for Proliferation.
After the announcement, the floor price of the Pudgy Penguins series began to surge, breaking through 20 ETH from 14 ETH within two days, and then breaking the historical high of 23 ETH, continuously refreshing new highs. Its sub-series Lil Pudgys floor price also followed and rose to a new high of 2.45 ETH.
At the same time, the floor price of the once-leading NFT series BAYC has dropped to 19.88 ETH, and the floor price of CryptoPunks, another pioneer NFT series under the same company, has also dropped to 38.49 ETH, about to be caught up by Pudgy Penguins.
The Pudgy Penguins series has also experienced low points on its way to today. It was initially launched by Cole Villemain and three other colleagues in 2021, featuring the theme of cute cartoon penguins, with a total of 8,888 unique NFTs. After its launch in July 2021, it quickly became popular and was one of the hottest collectibles in the NFT market at the time.
However, the project experienced major controversies in the early stage due to issues with the founding team's fund management and project development direction, and even fell into a crisis of trust. In 2022, against the backdrop of the overall decline in the NFT market, the popularity and floor price of the Pudgy Penguins also declined, but this all turned around after the new team led by Internet entrepreneur Luca Netz took over.
In April 2022, Luca Netz bought the project for 750 ETH ($2.5 million). He restructured the project's leadership and announced a new growth plan. Under Luca Netz's leadership, Pudgy Penguins has seen significant recovery in both floor price and overall brand image.
Luca Netz has successfully regained market attention for the Pudgy Penguins through rebuilding community trust, launching branded peripheral products, and empowering NFT holders, not only realizing a price rebound, but also expanding the brand influence to the real world. In May 2023, they launched Pudgy Toys, which can be purchased at Target, Walmart, and Amazon stores, making the Pudgy Penguins one of the best-performing NFT series in the bear market, with its floor price reaching a historical high of 23 ETH in early 2024.
However, the release of new tokens by NFT series is not a new phenomenon.
In March 2022, the then-leading NFT series Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) announced the launch of its token, with 14% airdropped to the community. As of the time of writing, the Ape token is priced at $1.6, far from its historical high of $28 at launch.
On the morning of March 30, 2024, the founder of another NFT series mfers announced the launch of the meme coin MFER and airdropped it to mfer holders. Later that day, MFER surged in price, briefly exceeding $0.03. As of the time of writing, the MFER price is around $0.026.
Will other leading NFT projects also choose to launch new "Tokens" to boost their prices?
On December 16, Waleswoosh, an anonymous researcher of the Azuki NFT series, posted on the X platform, asking "What would the market be like if the blue-chip NFT project CryptoPunks released the PUNK token?"
Greg Solano, co-founder of CryptoPunks' parent company Yuga Labs, responded, "Wow! I never thought of that."
