On December 16, according to OpenSea data, the floor price of the NFT Pudgy Penguins broke through 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 through 4 ETH, currently reported at 4.24 ETH (approximately 17,000 USD), with a 24-hour increase of 20.9%.
Notably, the Pudgy Penguins series has seen astonishing growth in this bull market. OpenSea data shows that its floor price has increased from around 11 ETH to 34 ETH in the past month, equivalent to about 980,000 RMB; and its market value has reached 300,000 ETH, approximately 1.19 billion USD as of the time of writing.
After the cryptocurrency bull market began, various sectors started to rotate, and the NFT sector is also slowly starting up.
On December 6, the NFT blue-chip project Pudgy Penguins announced that it will release its token PENGU in 2024. The total supply will be 88.88 billion, launched on the Solana chain. The parent company of Pudgy Penguins, Igloo, also stated that besides launching on Solana, the PENGU token plans to adopt a multi-chain strategy, including launches on Ethereum and Abstract.
In terms of specific allocation, 25.9% of the tokens will be allocated to the Pudgy community, 24.13% to other communities, 12.35% for liquidity, 11.48% to partners (with part unlocking after 1 year and a linear unlock over 3 years), 17.8% to the team, 4% for public sales, 0.35% to FTT holders, and 4% for Proliferation.
After the news was released, the floor price of the Pudgy Penguins series began to soar, breaking through 20 ETH from 14 ETH within two days. Following the announcement, the floor price of the Pudgy Penguins series began to move, surpassing 20 ETH within two days from 14 ETH, then breaking the historical high of 23 ETH and continuously setting new records. Its sub-series, Lil Pudgys, also rose to a historical high of 2.45 ETH.
Meanwhile, the floor price of the once-leading NFT series Bored Ape has dropped to 19.88 ETH, and the floor price of another NFT pioneer, CryptoPunks, has also fallen to 38.49 ETH, about to be caught up by Pudgy Penguins.
The Pudgy Penguins series has also experienced lows to reach where it is 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 quickly gained popularity and became a hot collectible in the NFT market.
However, the project experienced significant controversies in its early days, as the founding team faced community skepticism over fund management and project development direction, even falling into a trust crisis for a time. In 2022, amidst the overall decline of the NFT market, the popularity and floor price of Pudgy Penguins also decreased, but everything turned around 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 restructured the project's leadership and announced new growth plans. Under Luca Netz's leadership, Pudgy Penguins has made significant recoveries in floor price and overall brand image.
Luca Netz successfully regained market attention for the 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, he launched Pudgy Toys, which can be purchased 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, it is not new for NFT series to issue new tokens.
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 Ape token is priced at $1.6, far from its opening historical high of $28.
In the early hours of March 30, 2024, the founder of another NFT series, mfers, announced the launch of the meme coin MFER and airdropped it to mfer holders. Later that day, MFER's price surged to over $0.03. As of the time of writing, MFER's price is around $0.026.
Will other NFT leaders also choose to issue new 'Tokens' to drive prices?
On December 16, an anonymous researcher from the Azuki NFT series, Waleswoosh, posted on platform X, stating, '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 by saying, 'Wow! I never thought of that.'
