On December 16, according to OpenSea data, the floor price of NFT Pudgy Penguins broke 34 ETH, currently reported at 34.2 ETH (approximately 137,000 USD), with a 24-hour increase of 22.5%; its sub-series NFT Lil Pudgys broke 4 ETH, currently reported at 4.24 ETH (approximately 17,000 USD), with a 24-hour increase of 20.9%.
It is worth noting that the Pudgy Penguins series has experienced remarkable growth in this bull market, with OpenSea data showing that its floor price has risen from around 11 ETH to 34 ETH in nearly a month, approximately 980,000 RMB; and its market value has reached 300,000 ETH, equivalent to about 1.19 billion USD as of the time of writing.
After the arrival of the cryptocurrency bull market, various sectors began to rotate, and the NFT sector is also slowly starting.
On December 6, the NFT blue-chip project Pudgy Penguins announced that it will launch its token PENGU within 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 launching 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 some unlocking after one year of lock-up and three years of linear unlocking), 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 from 14 ETH to over 20 ETH within two days. Following the announcement, the floor price of the Pudgy Penguins series began to show unusual movements, breaking through 20 ETH within two days from 14 ETH, and then breaking the historical high of 23 ETH, continuously setting new records. Its sub-series, Lil Pudgys, also rose to a floor price of 2.45 ETH, creating a new historical high.
Meanwhile, the floor price of the once-leading NFT Bored Ape series has dropped to 19.88 ETH, and the floor price of another NFT ancestor, the CryptoPunks series, has also fallen to 38.49 ETH, about to be caught up by Pudgy Penguins.
The Pudgy Penguins series has actually gone through lows to reach 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. Since its launch in July 2021, it has quickly gained popularity, becoming a hot collectible in the NFT market at that time.
However, the project experienced significant controversies in its early stages, facing community doubts regarding the founding team's financial management and project development direction, even falling into a trust crisis for a time. In 2022, against the backdrop of a general decline in the NFT market, the popularity and floor price of Pudgy Penguins also declined, but everything changed when the new team led by internet entrepreneur Luca Netz took over.
In April 2022, Luca Netz bought 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 re-gained market attention for Pudgy Penguins by rebuilding community trust, launching brand peripheral products, and empowering NFT holders, achieving not only 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, the history of NFT series issuing new tokens is not new.
In March 2022, the then-leading NFT Bored Ape Yacht Club announced the issuance of tokens, with 14% airdropped to the community. As of the time of writing, the price of the Ape token is $1.6, far from its historical high of $28 at launch.
In the early morning of March 30, 2024, the founder of another NFT series mfers announced the launch of the meme coin MFER and conducted an airdrop to mfer holders. Later that day, MFER's price surged, exceeding $0.03 at one point. As of the time of writing, the price of MFER is around $0.026.
Will other NFT leaders also choose to issue new 'Tokens' to pump their prices?
On December 16, anonymous researcher Waleswoosh of the Azuki NFT series posted on platform X, asking, 'What would the market look like if the blue-chip NFT project CryptoPunks issued PUNK tokens?'
Garga.eth (Greg Solano), co-founder of CryptoPunks' parent company Yuga Labs, responded, 'Wow! I never thought of that.'
