A single Fat Penguin NFT worth 1 million RMB—will it become the new leader?
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A single Fat Penguin NFT worth 1 million RMB—will it become the new leader?
Pudgy Penguins is one step away from catching up to CryptoPunks.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsBy Leek, Foresight News
On December 16, according to OpenSea data, the floor price of the NFT collection Pudgy Penguins has surpassed 34 ETH, currently at 34.2 ETH (approximately $137,000), marking a 22.5% increase over the past 24 hours. Its sub-series, Lil Pudgys, has also surged past 4 ETH, now trading at 4.24 ETH (around $17,000), with a 20.9% gain in the same period.
Notably, the Pudgy Penguins collection has seen remarkable gains during this bull market cycle. OpenSea data shows its floor price has risen from around 11 ETH just one month ago to 34 ETH—equivalent to approximately 980,000 RMB. The collection’s market capitalization has reached 300,000 ETH, roughly $1.19 billion at press time.
Image source: OpenSea
As the crypto bull market resumes, different sectors are beginning to rotate in, and the NFT sector is gradually gaining momentum.
On December 6, blue-chip NFT project Pudgy Penguins announced it would launch its token, PENGU, within 2024. With a total supply of 88.88 billion tokens, PENGU will be issued on the Solana blockchain. Igloo, the parent company of Pudgy Penguins, also stated that beyond Solana, the PENGU token is planned for multi-chain deployment, including launches on Ethereum and Abstract.
In terms of allocation, 25.9% of the tokens will go to the Pudgy community, 24.13% to other communities, 12.35% for liquidity, 11.48% to partners (partially unlocked after a 1-year lock-up, then linearly unlocked over 3 years), 17.8% to the team, 4% for public sale, 0.35% to FTT holders, and 4% allocated to Proliferation.
Following the announcement, the floor price of the Pudgy Penguins collection began to move sharply, rising from 14 ETH to surpass 20 ETH within two days, then breaking through the previous high of 23 ETH and continuing to set new records. The floor price of its sub-series, Lil Pudgys, also climbed to 2.45 ETH, reaching an all-time high.
Meanwhile, the floor price of the once-dominant NFT collection Bored Ape Yacht Club has dropped to 19.88 ETH, while CryptoPunks, another pioneering NFT series under the same company, has fallen to 38.49 ETH—closing in on being overtaken by Pudgy Penguins.
Pudgy Penguins' journey to this point hasn't been without lows. Originally launched in 2021 by Cole Villemain and three colleagues, the collection features 8,888 unique NFTs based on cute cartoon penguins. It quickly gained popularity after its July 2021 debut, becoming one of the hottest collectibles in the NFT market at the time.
However, the project faced major controversy early on due to community backlash over fund management and direction, leading to a crisis of trust. In 2022, amid a broader downturn in the NFT market, Pudgy Penguins’ popularity and floor price declined significantly—until a turnaround came under new leadership led by internet entrepreneur Luca Netz.
In April 2022, Luca Netz acquired the project for 750 ETH (about $2.5 million). He restructured the leadership team and unveiled a new growth strategy. Under his guidance, Pudgy Penguins saw significant recovery in both floor price and brand image.
Through rebuilding community trust, launching branded merchandise, and enhancing utility for NFT holders, Luca Netz successfully revived market interest in Pudgy Penguins—not only driving price recovery but also expanding the brand's influence into the physical world. In May 2023, Pudgy Toys were released and became available at Target, Walmart, and Amazon, making Pudgy Penguins one of the best-performing NFT series during the bear market. Its floor price hit a record high of 23 ETH in early 2024.
Nonetheless, launching new tokens by existing NFT projects is not unprecedented.
In March 2022, then-market leader Bored Ape Yacht Club announced its token launch, with 14% airdropped to the community. At press time, the Ape token trades at $1.60, far below its all-time high opening price of $28.
In the early hours of March 30, 2024, mfers founder announced the launch of the meme coin MFER, distributing it via airdrop to mfer holders. Later that day, MFER surged to over $0.03. At press time, MFER trades around $0.026.
Will other top-tier NFT projects follow suit and issue new "tokens" to boost their valuations?
On December 16, Waleswoosh, an anonymous researcher for the Azuki NFT collection, posted on X: "What would the market look like if blue-chip NFT project CryptoPunks launched a PUNK token?"
Garga.eth (Greg Solano), co-founder of Yuga Labs—the company behind CryptoPunks—responded: "Wow! I never thought about that."
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