Pudgy Penguins NFTs prices fatten up after popular toy release, addition to Blend Marketplace
Pudgy Penguins, a non-fungible token (NFT) project made up of cute chubby birds, has experienced waves of success and misfortune since its debut in July 2021, including a rapid decline in price and sentiment as doubts surrounding its founders emerged later that year .
The community of holders, known as Pengus or “the Huddle”, were upset that the founders had failed to deliver on the project’s original roadmap. Their feathers were further ruffled after allegations emerged that the founders had siphoned funds from the treasury.
But this bird’s tale found another flight path: In April 2022, a Los Angeles entrepreneur and member of the Huddle himself, Luca Netz, stepped in and led the purchase of the token for 750 ETH, or $2.5 million at the time, with a promise to develop the brand and promote better communication. A little more than a year later, new investments, real-life toys and an upswing in NFT’s sales have restored Penguin NFT’s ethos of “good vibes and positivity for all” and helped Penguin prices to new heights.
After Luca Netz and the new team took over the project, they laid out their plans to focus on building out the project’s intellectual property rights (IP) and “to be the brand that leads the way in taking people from Web2 to Web3.” Unlike the original founders, they took steps to start putting the roadmap in place, announcing in the summer of 2022 that they would be making toys based on the penguin NFT and publish a children’s book.
In an interview with CoinDesk TV, Netz said he was “a firm believer that IP is going to be the Trojan horse to really bring hundreds of millions of people into crypto and into Web3.”
“For them to participate in the space, they have to fall in love with a character, and that character for us is the Pudgy Penguins,” he said.
Coinciding with the games, the team unveiled Pudgy World, which connects people’s real-world toy purchases with the digital world and puts them onboard Web3 in a frictionless way — the very “Trojan Horse” Netz talked about creating. Toy buyers who sign up with an email address receive NFTs and a crypto wallet without even realizing it, easing the otherwise onerous process of setting up and funding a crypto wallet.
Rounding off a strong first half of 2023, NFT lending platform Blend announced the inclusion by Pudgy Penguins on their platform, legitimizing its place among other popular collections such as Azuki and Bored Ape Yacht Club.
While the list of NFT projects that looked like the next big thing and then flamed out is huge, there is a much narrower group of projects that have passed a dark, icy winter. So what went right for these penguins?
In Web3, the power of community should not be underestimated. Netz and the management team understood that they needed to earn their trust and support, or they could suffer the same fate as the founders.
At the opposite end, NFT projects such as More than Gamers have suffered from unclear communication and a general lack of transparency, while Pixelmon NFT promised the “biggest and highest quality game” and delivered what even they had to admit was laughably bad art. Neither has managed to return at the time of writing.
The Huddle is also able to share in the Pudgy Penguins’ success. Part of the DNA of the project is to allow owners to leverage their IP and profit from their penguins, either through licensing or other deals.
Luca Netz said in a Twitter Spaces with Blur founder Pacman on May 25 that the toys were created with “the IP of 16 different holders.” He added that he felt it was his and his team’s responsibility to help the community make money and find licensing opportunities, since the average person has no idea how to make a licensing deal work.
Only time will tell if the project will continue to be successful, but the current forecast looks promising. At the time of writing, Pudgy Penguin NFTs have done a total of 170,457 ETH in trading volume (over $300 million) and have a floor price of 5.4 ETH, or around $9,700.
