Article originally published by: Nancy.
Author: Nancy, PANews.
On the evening of December 17, the highly anticipated leading NFT project Pudgy Penguins announced its launch and airdrop, with over 100,000 claims received. The high traffic led to a temporary malfunction of the claim API, but it has now resumed. Binance data shows that the token PENGU reached a peak opening price of $0.07, with an FDV (fully diluted valuation) peaking at $6.2 billion, though the current price has since fallen.
From the perspective of airdrop eligibility queries, users can add multiple wallet addresses for queries at once, including holders of Pudgy Penguins series NFTs, Ethereum/Solana OG players, L2 Abstract Enjoyers, and various chain Explorers can all receive PENGU token airdrops, with more conditions leading to a greater number of airdrops.
From the reports of various players, aside from NFT holders making significant profits worth tens of thousands to millions of dollars, some veteran players with multiple addresses have also won a valuable "pork trotter rice". Of course, some users ended up with nothing after checking dozens of addresses. In addition to the high returns from the airdrop, experienced traders have also earned huge profits through on-chain arbitrage. According to Lookonchain monitoring, one trader made a profit of 36,984 SOL (approximately $836,000) by trading PENGU in less than 20 minutes. Additionally, some whales are buying in large quantities, with Lookonchain monitoring showing that one whale spent 15,300 SOL ($3.46 million) to purchase 6.47 million PENGU tokens at an average price of $0.053.
It is worth noting that according to on-chain analyst Ai Yi's detection, wallets associated with the PENGU project (or early investors) are currently selling off large amounts on-chain, having sold PENGU worth $8.74 million.
During this airdrop frenzy, Pudgy Penguins not only successfully drove up the prices of its NFTs but also further expanded its community and ecological influence. However, the profit-driven incentives from the airdrop have also triggered a large number of speculative behaviors, causing dissatisfaction within the community.
Leveraging the airdrop activity to boost NFT prices and expand the community.
With a flexible airdrop mechanism and a wide range of token distribution strategies, Pudgy Penguins has attracted a lot of attention over this period and actively expanded its community size and ecological influence.
On one hand, unlike most projects that determine airdrop eligibility through snapshots, Pudgy Penguins' airdrop has no time limit; the PENGU token will be allocated to relevant NFTs upon launch, and holders have 88 days to apply. This flexible airdrop mechanism has also led to massive hoarding of Pudgy Penguins series NFTs, injecting strong upward momentum into their prices.
According to NFT Price Floor data, from the announcement of the token issuance plan on December 6 to the official launch, the floor price of Pudgy Penguins rose by as much as 133.6%, while Lil Pudgys saw an increase of 165.7%. Meanwhile, sales of the Pudgy Penguins series also surged significantly, with CryptoSlam statistics showing that during this period, sales of Pudgy Penguins exceeded $54 million, and Lil Pudgys reached $22.6 million.
On the other hand, Pudgy Penguins hopes to expand its community size through the airdrop. The token economic model of PENGU shows that in addition to 25.9% of the total token allocation to the Pudgy community, other communities will also receive 24.12% of the tokens. According to Pudgy Penguins, the Solana ecosystem can expect approximately 25% of the PENGU token supply to be airdropped, allowing active users of applications like Phantom Wallet and Jupiter to receive airdrops even without holding NFTs. This portion of wallet addresses is approximately 7 million, covering users and community members from multiple protocols.
In addition, in expanding the ecological scale, Pudgy Penguins' tokens also adopted a multi-chain deployment strategy. In addition to being deployed on Solana, they will also launch on Ethereum and the anticipated L2 network Abstract Chain. Igloo, the parent company of Pudgy Penguins, stated that this move aims to create the largest on-chain community by expanding the audience of the Pudgy Penguins ecosystem through multi-chain deployment.
The airdrop has sparked a craze for physical toy speculation, and the theft of QR codes has caused dissatisfaction.
Although the Pudgy Penguins airdrop activity has incentivized community members and promoted ecological development, it has also triggered speculation chaos. With the introduction of Pudgy Toys, the IP derivative toy of Pudgy Penguins, this toy quickly attracted a large number of speculators' attention, becoming a target for them to snatch up.
"I just hired a group of kids to help me shop at Walmart, eagerly waiting for my airdrop." "Getting a free 10x airdrop from Pudgy Penguins toys that no one wanted to buy at Walmart, I spent $1,000 on this experiment, and I might buy more. I will donate these toys to children for Christmas. Regardless of the outcome, it's a win-win situation." "Ordered 10,000 penguin toys from Amazon at $20 each; if each toy has an airdrop of $100, returning these toys would yield a profit of $1 million without any cost."
Pudgy Toys are being snatched up.
On social media platforms, speculators are sharing their "achievements" in hoarding Pudgy Penguins toys, attempting to profit by massively stocking up on Pudgy Toys. Compared to the risks of purchasing high-premium NFTs for airdrops or the financial losses it might bring, buying physical toys can yield considerable profits with no cost.
Driven by interests, many speculators are profiting from the QR codes inside Pudgy Penguins toys (which grant access to Pudgy World) and even resorting to theft, a behavior that detaches from the original cultural and emotional value of Pudgy Penguins, causing controversy and criticism.
"$PENGU is about to be issued, and toys are nearly sold out across North America. Is anyone willing to buy these QR codes?" Some users are selling QR codes for Pudgy Penguins toys at high prices. Others have stated that some boxes ordered from Walmart are missing QR codes or do not contain toys.
The QR codes for Pudgy Toys have been destroyed.
According to a post by Suji, the founder of Mask, "Today in New York stores, there were Web2.5 users wanting to buy some Pudgy Penguins toys, but found that several packaging boxes had been opened, and the accompanying QR codes had been stolen. These toys were originally meant for those who truly love Pudgy Penguins. Even if many people accidentally lost their QR codes, they still enjoyed the fun. However, with the launch of the airdrop, Degens flocked to the stores, making this irresponsible behavior. This behavior is theft, and the entire crypto community should condemn such actions. Please leave the Pudgy Penguins toys for those who truly love them."
Overall, the airdrop activity of Pudgy Penguins has brought significant ecological expansion and market heat to the project. However, how to balance cultural spirit and community values while promoting economic incentives has become an important topic that Pudgy Penguins and other crypto projects need to think deeply about and pay attention to for long-term development.
