Interview | Jack
Editors | Sleepy.txt, Kaori
"We want to surpass Hello Kitty and Pokémon."
It's hard to imagine that a new IP just four years old would dare to challenge two of the world's top cultural symbols head-on. Pudgy Penguins, the adorable penguins, surprisingly have an unexpected aggressiveness.
However, they now indeed have the confidence.
They have entered 3,100 Walmart stores, selling millions of physical toys; on social platforms, "Pudgy Penguins" have become a traffic password, with nearly 2 million Instagram followers, over 700,000 TikTok followers, and their stickers have a total of 54.7 billion views on GIPHY. They even have two of the top ten most interactive posts in Walmart's Twitter history.
In the Non-Fungible Token field, they are almost the sole survivor.
Three years ago, the crypto market entered a long bear market. The brief and intense "NFT Summer" quickly became a nostalgic memory. Those NFT IPs that intended to subvert Sanrio and challenge Nintendo one by one faded away, becoming blurry in the continuously declining floor price curve.
Pudgy Penguins, which was also standing on the edge of a cliff, was trapped in early founding team mismanagement, wavering direction, and collapsed community trust, until one person appeared.
Luca Netz, spending $2.5 million, acquired the entire project.
From Homeless Youth to Top Trader
Luca Netz is not a typical Web3 entrepreneur, but Pudgy Penguins survived entirely because of him.
Born in Los Angeles, he grew up wandering around the world. His mother moved around with him and his brother, without a fixed residence, often sleeping on friends' or relatives' sofas.
At 16, he dropped out of high school to support his family and began his hustle career.
Initially, he built independent sites on Shopify, selling accessories popular among rappers, placing small-scale ads on Instagram, and leveraging a few hundred dollars to generate thousands of dollars in orders.
He didn't stockpile goods, focusing only on advertising and conversion, capturing emotions while outsourcing the supply chain. This drop-shipping model helped him earn his first pot of gold. Two years later, he sold the entire project, earning $8 million.
He was just 18 years old that year.
Later, he began to participate in real brand building, from category planning and content narrative to channel strategy, starting to build a complete system.
He has created DTC brands himself and helped old trendy brands like Von Dutch return to young people's vision.
He also founded the toy gun brand Gel Blaster and served as CMO. During the post-pandemic window period, he captured teenagers' attention from TikTok and then entered offline supermarkets.
Luca is not just a marketing person. He manages product lines, focuses on content strategies, and studies how channels can cooperate. His expertise is making something go from being seen to being liked, and then making people willing to pay for it.
The prototype of all Pudgy Penguins' strategies was actually already formed at that time.
Pudgy Penguins was once a blue-chip Non-Fungible Token project in 2021, but by 2022, the community was fragmented, the founding team was voted out, and market sentiment hit rock bottom. The "IP cultural narrative" of Non-Fungible Tokens was essentially declared dead.
Luca didn't hesitate. In April 2022, he acquired the entire project for 750 ETH (about $2.5 million). He said Pudgy Penguins was the first Non-Fungible Token he bought. Beyond sentiment, his years of brand experience cultivated a sixth sense, and he saw the infinite potential of these chubby penguins.
Although he is not the founder of Pudgy Penguins, he gave Pudgy Penguins a new birthday.
Today's Pudgy Penguins is no longer the once-tottering Non-Fungible Token avatar. It has defied fate, becoming the face of the entire crypto world and the reason many people enter Web3.
Recently, it went up to the Nasdaq opening bell with asset management company VanEck, becoming the first Web3 native IP to directly participate in such a ceremony. After this ceremony, listed companies like Coinbase, large enterprises, and celebrities all put on penguin avatars, unanimously viewing it as a new symbol, a mascot that can represent the entire financial world.
BlockBeats recently contacted our old friend Luca Netz for a long conversation.
In this dialogue, he talked about Pudgy Penguins' ambitions. From becoming the "face of finance" to directly competing with Hello Kitty and Pokémon; from building huge influence in Web2 to constructing an entire ecosystem around Crypto as the core. Luca is building his IP empire, aiming to make Pudgy Penguins the "Mickey Mouse of the Internet era".
Below is our complete exclusive interview.
Becoming the "Face" of the Crypto World
In July, Coinbase changed its X account avatar to a Pudgy Penguin, with the caption "New avatar, who doesn't like it". Immediately after, multiple crypto project parties such as OpenSea, MoonPay, Polkadot, EigenCloud, and OKX successively changed to Pudgy Penguins themed avatars, as if rehearsed in advance. This influence has also deeply penetrated traditional finance.
VanEck, the old private investment management company established in 1955, had quietly changed its Twitter avatar to a Pudgy Penguin as early as 2024. On June 23rd this year, they even brought Pudgy Penguins to the Nasdaq stage, ringing the opening bell with Luca Netz. On that day, Luca wrote on his LinkedIn: "Pudgy Penguins is the face of crypto."
BlockBeats: Recently, many celebrities and companies have changed their avatars to Pudgy Penguins on X. What exactly happened behind this?
Luca Netz: I think this is actually the natural result of Pudgy Penguins' development to this point. It has become the "face" and mascot of the crypto world. And its biggest difference from other meme images or Non-Fungible Token projects is that it truly suits everyone.
Coinbase was among the first to start changing avatars, but getting over 300 people/companies to change avatars wasn't something we were pushing behind the scenes. It just happened naturally. I think this is because everyone gradually reached the same conclusion as our internal team: Pudgy Penguins is the most popular image in the crypto world.
Once big companies start changing avatars, whether you're a small business, a billionaire, or a big trader, you naturally want to join this avatar-changing trend, and everyone is having fun. This is actually the derivative effect of Pudgy Penguins being seen as the mascot of the crypto world.
BlockBeats: Why would Coinbase change its avatar?
Luca Netz: Coinbase changed its avatar because of their social media intern Alex. He is actually a long-time Pudgy Penguins holder and community member for three years. He posted a tweet asking everyone which avatar he should choose, and finally selected a Pudgy Penguin.
Later, some people indeed came to us to customize avatars, and we helped them, but this was not an activity we planned ourselves. Such things have actually been happening in the past few years, such as Phantom changing avatars, Solana changing avatars, but it was only after Coinbase changed avatars that it truly drove all mainstream exchanges and communities to follow suit.
We did not organize this event, but we assisted them behind the scenes in making custom avatars and making this trend better.
BlockBeats Beating: Why are Pudgy Penguins' community members so energetic, while other Non-Fungible Token communities are not? For example, Bored Ape.
Luca Netz: If you feel like you missed Bored Ape in 2020 or 2021, you're just in time for the early stage of Pudgy Penguins.
Bored Ape did indeed attract many celebrities back then, while Pudgy has gathered celebrities, billionaires, Crypto natives, and project parties together. To be honest, I think you'll soon see a wave even crazier than back then. Bored Ape did have similar community momentum, but this time we'll be bigger.
From my perspective, a crucial point for Pudgy's huge influence is its credibility. For example, we've already entered Walmart, Target, with over ten thousand retail stores selling our products across the US, and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange recently launched an ETF related to us. Institutions like Bitwise and VanEck have changed their avatars to Pudgy Penguins. By the way, Bitmine's avatar on X is now a Pudgy Penguin, and they're one of the largest ETH holders.
People are willing to participate because the project is reliable enough. They're not shilling some air coin or speculating, but standing with the strongest brands, largest communities, and most beloved IPs in the crypto field. This brings them attention, goodwill, and social interaction - all truly positive things.
A fundamental difference between Pudgy Penguins and Bored Ape is that it's more universal, mainstream, and inclusive.
Don't underestimate the participation and power of the female group. To put it bluntly, Pudgy is like a "digital version of Labubu", and Labubu's popularity is largely due to female users.
In our community, we have the most influential female user group in the entire crypto field. Everyone can gather around this IP, which is not due to luck, but the "magic" of the Pudgy Penguins IP itself - it's infectious and has warmth, something you absolutely cannot underestimate.
BlockBeats Beating: Can you specifically talk about the impact of the female community on Pudgy Penguins? What exactly do you mean when you say they drove the brand?
Luca Netz: We especially feel this in Asia, where the male-to-female ratio in the community is basically 50-50. In the US, it's about 70% male and 30% female.
Think about the essence of Pudgy Penguins - it's a "cute" IP, and "cute" IPs can rule the world (laughs). Women really love "cute culture", and our community itself is very inclusive. I think this is a community that can make women truly proud.
There were some female-dominated communities in the crypto world before, but in terms of scale and cohesion, none have grown like Pudgy Penguins. So I think many women have found their "sense of belonging" in the crypto world here. They like wearing our merchandise, participating in our culture, which makes them proud.
I'm always thinking, where is the "home" for women in the crypto world? If you think carefully, in the entire crypto world, Pudgy Penguins might be the only place where women can truly gather on a large scale, communicate, and participate in activities.
Can you name another project that can bring so many women together to discuss crypto, play together, and build together? Maybe some small communities exist, but only Pudgy Penguins has real scale. When we host events, the male-to-female ratio is often 50:50 - a scene you can't see in any other crypto project. I think this is truly special.
BlockBeats Beating: Your exposure is now increasingly appearing in NASDAQ photos, such as bell-ringing ceremonies, where everyone wants to go on stage with Pudgy Penguins. Community members say you not only want to be the face of the crypto world but even the face of finance. Is there an intrinsic connection between this avatar-changing movement, the female community, and your increasingly "financial quality"?
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