A fat penguin NFT is worth 1 million RMB. Is it going to become the new "big boss"?

Author: Leek, Foresight News

On December 16, according to OpenSea data, the floor price of the NFT Pudgy Penguins has surpassed 34 ETH, currently reported at 34.2 ETH (approximately $137,000), with a 24-hour increase of 22.5%; its sub-series NFT Lil Pudgys has broken 4 ETH, currently reported at 4.24 ETH (approximately $17,000), with a 24-hour increase of 20.9%.

It is noteworthy that the Pudgy Penguins series has seen remarkable growth 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 approximately 980,000 RMB; and its market capitalization has reached 300,000 ETH, amounting to about $1.19 billion as of the time of writing.

Image source: OpenSea

After the arrival of the cryptocurrency bull market, various sectors have begun to rotate, and the NFT sector is also slowly starting up.

On December 6, the NFT blue-chip project Pudgy Penguins announced that it will release its token PENGU in 2024. The total supply will be 88.88 billion tokens, released on the Solana chain. The parent company of Pudgy Penguins, Igloo, also stated that in addition to launching on Solana, the PENGU token plans to adopt a multi-chain approach, including launches on Ethereum and Abstract.

In terms of specific allocation, 25.9% of the tokens will be allocated to the Pudgy community, 24.13% will be allocated to other communities, 12.35% will be used for liquidity, 11.48% will be allocated to partners (with partial unlocking after 1 year of lock-up and linear unlocking over 3 years), 17.8% will be allocated to the team, 4% will be used for public sales, 0.35% will be allocated to FTT holders, and 4% will be used for Proliferation.

After the announcement, the floor price of the Pudgy Penguins series began to surge, breaking through 20 ETH within two days from 14 ETH. Following this, the floor price broke the historical high of 23 ETH and continued to set new records. Its sub-series Lil Pudgys also rose to a floor price of 2.45 ETH, setting a new historical high.

Meanwhile, the once-leading NFT series Bored Ape Yacht Club has seen its floor price drop to 19.88 ETH, and another NFT pioneer under the same company, CryptoPunks, has seen its floor price fall to 38.49 ETH, soon to be caught up by Pudgy Penguins.

The Pudgy Penguins series has also experienced lows to reach where it is today. It was initially launched in 2021 by Cole Villemain and three other colleagues, themed around cute cartoon penguins, with a total of 8,888 unique NFTs. After its launch in July 2021, it quickly became popular and a hot collectible in the NFT market at that time.

However, the project faced significant controversies in its early days, as the founding team was questioned by the community regarding fund management and project development direction, even falling into a trust crisis at one point. In 2022, against the backdrop of an overall decline in the NFT market, the popularity and floor price of Pudgy Penguins also declined, but everything changed when a new team led by internet entrepreneur Luca Netz took over.

In April 2022, Luca Netz purchased the project for 750 ETH (2.5 million USD). He reorganized the project's leadership and announced a new growth plan. Under Luca Netz's leadership, Pudgy Penguins saw significant recovery in both floor price and overall brand image.

Luca Netz successfully regained market attention for Pudgy Penguins by rebuilding community trust, launching brand peripheral products, and empowering NFT holders, not only achieving a price rebound but also expanding its brand influence into the real world. In May 2023, Pudgy Toys were launched, available for purchase at Target and Walmart stores as well as on Amazon, making Pudgy Penguins the best-performing NFT series during the bear market, with its floor price reaching a historical high of 23 ETH in early 2024.

However, there is a history of NFT series releasing new tokens.

In March 2022, the then-leading NFT Bored Ape Yacht Club announced the issuance 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 opening historical high of $28.

On March 30, 2024, the founder of another NFT series, mfers, announced the launch of the meme coin MFER and airdropped it to mfer holders. Subsequently, on the same day, MFER's price surged, exceeding $0.03 at one point. As of the time of writing, the MFER price is around $0.026.

Will other leading NFT projects also choose to issue new "tokens" to drive prices up?

On December 16, Azuki NFT series anonymous researcher Waleswoosh posted on the X platform, asking, "What would the market look like if the blue-chip NFT project CryptoPunks released the PUNK token?"

Garga.eth (Greg Solano), co-founder of CryptoPunks' parent company Yuga Labs, responded, "Wow! I never thought of that."