A fat penguin NFT is worth 1 million RMB. Is it going to become the new “leader”?

Foresight News Pudgy Penguins is just one step away from catching up with CryptoPunks. Author: Leek, Foresight News On December 16, according to OpenSea data, the floor price of Pudgy Penguins NFT broke 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 broke 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 increase 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 RMB 980,000; and its market value has reached 300,000 ETH, which is about $1.19 billion as of the time of writing. After the arrival of the cryptocurrency bull market, various sectors have started to rotate, and the NFT sector has also slowly started. On December 6, the blue-chip NFT project Pudgy Penguins announced that it will release its token PENGU within 2024. The total supply is 8.888 billion, released 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% will be distributed to other communities, 12.35% will be used for liquidity, 11.48% will be distributed to partners (partially unlocked after 1 year of lockup, linearly unlocked in 3 years), 17.8% will be distributed to the team, 4% will be used for public offering, 0.35% will be distributed to FTT holders, and 4% will be used for Proliferation. After the announcement, the floor price of the Pudgy Penguins series began to fluctuate. Within two days, it broke through the 20 ETH mark from 14 ETH, and then broke the historical high of 23 ETH, and began to refresh the historical high continuously. Its sub-series Lil Pudgys floor price also followed and rose to 2.45 ETH, reaching a new historical high. At the same time, the floor price of the once-leading NFT project BAYC has dropped to 19.88 ETH, and the floor price of CryptoPunks, another pioneer NFT 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 a low point on its way to today. It was initially launched by Cole Villemain and three other colleagues in 2021, with 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 became a hot collectible in the NFT market at the time. However, the project experienced major controversies in the early stage due to the problems of the founding team in fund management and project development direction, and even fell into a crisis of trust. In 2022, against the backdrop of the overall decline of the NFT market, the popularity and floor price of Pudgy Penguins also declined, but everything changed 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 a significant recovery in floor price and overall brand image. Luca Netz, through rebuilding community trust, launching brand peripheral products, and empowering NFT holders, has successfully regained market attention for Pudgy Penguins, not only realizing the price recovery, 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 Pudgy Penguins 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 history. In March 2022, the then-leading NFT project 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, once 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, saying, "What would the market be like if the blue-chip NFT project CryptoPunks released the PUNK token?" Garga.eth (Greg Solano), co-founder of the CryptoPunks parent company Yuga Labs, responded, "Wow! I never thought about that."