Guardians of the NFT Market: The Community Self-Rescue Action of Pudgy Penguins

The airdrop from Pudgy Penguins is not only shocking but also touching.

What is shocking is its wide user coverage, which is unparalleled among all NFT projects with token airdrops. What is touching is that this project, which was originally abandoned, has been revived by an entrepreneur, and it has steadily progressed to today and is achieving new brilliance.

All the Ethereum wallet addresses I have used received rewards in this airdrop, which truly moved me.

In the comments at the end of the article the day before yesterday, a reader happened to mention this project.

All of this made me reminisce about my past interactions with this project. I can't recall the exact times of these interactions, so today I will share these memories based on my recollections.

Readers who have followed my previous articles know that I am a heavy enthusiast of NFTs, mainly within the Ethereum ecosystem.

During the NFT craze that surged in 2021, I handled many well-known NFT projects in the Ethereum ecosystem, including Pudgy Penguins and the Lil Penguins mentioned in this airdrop.

However, at that time, my attention to Pudgy Penguins was far from high, definitely not comparable to my love for CryptoPunks and Bored Apes. Therefore, like many other blue-chip NFTs I bought, I sold it without any hesitation when I later liquidated my NFTs.

After I sold it, a big news broke about the project: its founder was exposed for a dark past and "repeated the same trick" by abandoning the project.

This huge blow quickly devastated the project, leading to a collapse in its floor price.

What impressed me deeply was that the project's community was very proactive and began a series of self-rescue measures.

But for me, I merely observed everything happening and felt fortunate that I had avoided the pitfall.

Not long after, the community announced the latest development: entrepreneur Luca Netz had acquired the project from the founder.

At that time, I had read about this entrepreneur and remembered that he had started businesses in multiple fields and had achieved decent results. However, based solely on these experiences, I couldn't see any particular highlights that could reshape the future of this project—there are too many such entrepreneurs in the U.S.

Then, the entire crypto market entered a bear market that we all witnessed together. In this bear market, not to mention Pudgy Penguins, even CryptoPunks and Bored Apes suffered significant declines—no project in the entire NFT space was spared.

But I still paid close attention to the development of the NFT space, especially the series of actions taken by Bored Apes. Because I have always believed that if even Bored Apes cannot find a new direction for NFT development, then aside from CryptoPunks, other projects in the NFT space might go to zero.

During the most torturous period of the bear market, Bored Apes launched one new game after another. Although the results now seem less than ideal, at that time, they managed to retain some popularity for the NFT ecosystem and provided a glimmer of hope for the space.

From the actions of Bored Apes, it seemed that although the games they launched ultimately had mediocre results, I still believe that the future hope of the NFT space lies in gaming.

During that time, Pudgy Penguins occasionally announced some noteworthy developments. I remember that Luca began to focus on the IP, creating plush toys of the pudgy penguins, and it seemed that they achieved good sales performance on Amazon and in offline stores.

However, I was not very convinced by this.

I clearly remember mentioning Pudgy Penguins' marketing in one of my earlier articles. I believe that pursuing physical products and making IP toys is a rather outdated marketing strategy for NFTs.

I still believe that purely on-chain and purely online products are the future of NFTs.

Later on, I heard news about Pudgy Penguins again, seemingly because of its toy sales performance, which reignited the community's hope for the project, even causing its NFT floor price to temporarily exceed that of Bored Apes.

This rekindled my interest in the project. But when I discovered that this was the reason, my enthusiasm quickly faded. However, I continued to observe for about a week or two. As a result, its floor price fell back again and once again lagged behind Bored Apes by a considerable margin.

So I thought it was just a passing trend, and this project was still just a second-tier project.

At that time, I did have the thought: should I buy one?

But then I thought, buying a pudgy penguin is not as good as adding money to buy a top-tier project like Bored Apes. However, if I buy a Bored Ape, I already have some, and buying one more wouldn't make much difference to me.

So I quickly dismissed that thought.

Later, another once-famous project in the NFT ecosystem, 0N1 Force, reminded me of Pudgy Penguins.

That was a piece of news from the 0N1 Force community.

0N1 Force is the first side-profile NFT project of the anime genre in the Ethereum ecosystem. This project was once very popular but was later abandoned by its team. However, it was in a worse situation than Pudgy Penguins—after being abandoned, it went a long time without attention, and its floor price plummeted to a pitiful level, nearly zero.

The news was that it, like Pudgy Penguins, had been acquired.

I remember that several well-known players came together to acquire this project. Among these well-known players were those who had worked in the entertainment industry in Hollywood, those who had previously consulted for Bored Apes, and others who had succeeded in entrepreneurship in various fields.

Seeing this news, I immediately thought of Pudgy Penguins and compared this team with Luca. I felt that this team, in terms of background and experience, was stronger than Luca.

Therefore, I thought that if Pudgy Penguins could rise, 0N1 Force also had a chance.

More importantly, at that time, the price of 0N1 Force was significantly lower than that of Pudgy Penguins, so I felt that buying Pudgy Penguins was not as good as buying 0N1 Force.

After that, I no longer paid attention to Pudgy Penguins. It wasn't until this airdrop that it rekindled these memories for me.

A reader left a comment asking how to identify potential projects early based on the development of Pudgy Penguins.

From my experience, if I had not recognized the potential of Pudgy Penguins, I would not have been able to seize this opportunity.

First of all, I do not agree with the operational methods Luca used to save the project.

Secondly, during the project's development, there were several times when I considered buying it, but I felt there were better projects worth buying than it.

If I had to say what factors in Pudgy Penguins' revival are worth noting?

I believe it is what I have consistently emphasized: investing in projects is fundamentally about investing in people.

Although I do not agree with Luca's operational methods, I have a high regard for Luca as a person.

Therefore, in this process, if investors highly recognize Luca as a person and also endorse Luca's operational methods, then I believe that when Luca began to focus on the IP and started to see initial success with plush toys, it would be time to seriously consider this NFT.

Additionally, there is another situation where investors can firmly grasp this wave of dividends: that is, a heartfelt love for this NFT, without regrets, not for profit, but for some sentiment or experience in their hearts—this kind of understanding can probably only be felt by players who have personally played and loved an NFT.