How to Buy Your First Pudgy Penguins NFT
TL;DR
- After launching in July 2021, the Pudgy Penguins IP and royalty rights were purchased for $2.5 million by Luca Netz.
- The team is working on manufacturing toys, publishing books, building a metaverse game, introducing a token ecosystem, and more.
- On Aug. 22, a 1/1 Pudgy Penguin sold for 400 ETH, the collection's highest-ever sale.
- You can buy Pudgy Penguins NFTs on their official marketplace or OpenSea.
How to Buy Pudgy Penguins
There are two safe and secure locations to purchase a new Pudgy Penguins NFT: the official Pudgy Penguins’ marketplace and the leading Ethereum-based NFT secondary marketplace, OpenSea.
Access the official marketplace here.
Access the official OpenSea collection page here.
Prior to buying a Pudgy Penguins NFT, you’ll have to create or sign into your crypto wallet. MetaMask is the most popular wallet software provider. Create a MetaMask account here.
Next you’ll need to fund your crypto wallet with enough ETH to cover the purchase price and a small gas fee.
Once funded, find the Pudgy Penguin that speaks most to you – remember your Pudgy Penguin is you, and you are your Pudgy Penguin, according to the project’s official website. Use the How Are Pudgy Penguins Valued section below to help in your search for the perfect NFT.
The buying process is the same on both the official Pudgy Penguins’ marketplace and OpenSea. With your wallet connected and funded, click the buy now button. Sign the message that pops up and confirm the transaction. The transaction will process for a few seconds to minutes before informing you that the process is complete. Your new NFT will be in your crypto wallet.
Congratulations on buying your first Pudgy Penguins NFT!
But What Are Pudgy Penguins Anyway?
Pudgy Penguins is a collection of 8,888 plump penguin NFTs, created to “maximize the vibe” and become “a beacon of positivity in the NFT space,” according to the project’s official website and OpenSea description.
The project has been featured in New York Times, Yahoo!, Bloomberg, and more.
Headed by a new team – Luca Netz (CEO), Lorenzo Melendez (CTO), Nicholas Ravid (CMO), Peter Lobanov (CCO), Jennifer McGlone (CLO), and Dr. Kaizu (Head of Operations) – Pudgy Penguins is creating unique IP licensing opportunities for holders through toys and books, building out a metaverse, game, and token ecosystem, and pursuing other ambitious goals.
There are also two Pudgy Penguins expansionary collections: Lil Pudgys and Pudgy Rods.
Lil Pudgys is a collection of 22,222 tiny penguin NFTs, randomly generated on the Ethereum blockchain. The first 8,888 were given to Pudgy Penguin holders at the time of the snapshot. The rest served as a fundraising opportunity for the team.
Pudgy Rods is a collection of 7,400 fishing rod NFTs and has been a hot topic of debate within the Pudgy Penguin community. The rods, or “rogs” as the misspelling suggested originally, were dropped on Christmas 2021 and have no utility currently. It is yet to be seen if the new team has plans for Pudgy Rods.
Who Is the Team Behind Pudgy Penguins?
Anonymous co-founders Cole Thereum (@ColeThereum) and Mr. Tubby (@tubbyfat) created Pudgy Penguins in July 2021. The project’s artist, Antoine Mingo, joined the team via Upwork, a freelancing platform for creators to find clients.
Origins of Pudgy Penguins
Mingo’s first gig with Cole Thereum, more commonly known just as Cole in the NFT space, and Mr. Tubby earned him $150. Despite becoming the artist for one of the most successful NFT projects in the sector’s early history, he didn’t know much about the new technology.
“I’m normally a realism artist, but Cole really wanted me to draw these simple penguins,” Mingo said. “When I was drawing them, in the back of my mind [were] the penguins from Mario 64.”
By the time Cole taught Mingo how to create separate traits and layers based on the same base penguin shape and Mingo delivered on hats, outfits, glasses, and color schemes, he had earned $50,000 in cash and Ether (ETH, or Ethereum’s native token). And soon, the project that he delivered the art for had sold out its mint and transacted on the secondary marketplace for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
But it wasn’t all fun in the sun, and eventually the ice started to break from underneath Pudgy Penguins.
Pudgy Penguins’ Downfall
In December 2021 – after months of declining sales, a falling floor price, an unfulfilled roadmap, and an increasingly frustrated community – Pudgy Penguins released an airdrop that destroyed any remaining positive vibe. The team gifted fishing rods to all current holders and misspelled the collection’s name as “rogs.” The “rogs” were useless because the “upcoming” metaverse game had not been developed.
“That was the rod that broke the camel’s back,” according to Pudgy Penguins’ community manager ActuallyAgents (@ActuallyAgents). “Imagine if you were a kid waking up on Christmas and your grandma got you a PlayStation 2 game, but you didn’t own a PlayStation 2.”
Pudgy Penguins fell from an average sale all-time high (at the time) of 5.7 ETH to under 0.7 ETH on Christmas Day.
Then, in January 2022, 9x9x9 (@9x9x9eth) posted a Twitter thread alleging that – despite promises of a children’s book, a token, and a metaverse game – the team had no funds left.
“Then I learned all ETH had been split, [and] the company they want to sell [has] zero ETH/USD in it,” he wrote. “They did two fundraising [rounds] with [NFTs] and [promised] games and development, [but] it’s all empty. They might invest some of the royalty [fees] back [into the project] to hire some mods, [but] to be honest, I don’t know what [the] plan is.”
“So this company with zero ETH [carries] a debt of two fundraising [rounds] and boat [loads] of promises to the community [and] investors,” 9x9x9 continued. “They reduced the price from 4,000 ETH for 20 percent [of the project] to 888 ETH for 100 percent. They want to walk away with [all the] ETH they raised and sell the sinking ship for another 888 ETH.”
Pudgy Penguins’ Comeback
9x9x9, who still owns hundreds of Pudgy Penguins and Lil Pudgys – an expansionary collection launched in December 2021 -- did not purchase the project.
Four months after the rumors started circling about a potential buyout, Los Angeles-based entrepreneur Luca Netz bought control of the collection and its royalties. Netz and his collaborator, Cameron Mouléne – the founder of web3 entertainment studio Non-Fungible Films – now lead the project with several unidentified stakeholders.
When Netz first entered the NFT space, he purchased Pudgy Penguins before any other project.
Speaking on the acquisition and future success of the project, Netz said, “This deal [has] take way longer than I thought,” and, “Everything is aligned to make this one of the most prevalent projects of all time.”
Since the acquisition, Netz and his team have delivered on a number of important roadmap items, including a toy deal with PMI Toys, the toy maker for Fortnite and Nickelodeon. The team is also in the process of creating the long-awaited children’s book.
The team also established an advisory board with Alek Svanevik (CEO of Nansen), Jordan Sterling (partnerships at Meta), RJ Cilley (COO of Saks Fifth Avenue), Sanjay Raghavan (head of web3 at Roofstock), Chet Kuchinad (CPO at Save the Children), Bee Nguyen (general partner at Limited Ventures), Jess Richardson (head of licensing at Hasbro), Paolo Morena (advisor at SFX Ent. and Fashion Nova), Pentoshi (crypto trader), and one surprise “superstar” (TBA).
The floor price skyrocketed to more than 4 ETH following the acquisition and subsequent announcements, and Pudgy Penguins looks to have fully recovered from the depths of the NFT junk pile.
How Are Pudgy Penguins Valued?
Pudgy Penguins, like most pfp (profile picture) NFT collections, are valued based on the project’s floor price and specific traits. A project’s floor price moves up and down based on various marketplace conditions, including roadmap execution, holder and collector confidence, and more.
Traits also impact each NFT’s price. The rarer the traits, the more expensive the NFT typically is.
Which Pudgy Penguins' Traits Are the Best?
There are five total traits for each Pudgy Penguins NFT: background, body, face, head, and skin.
Included in the background traits are five unique 1/1 Pudgy Penguins. The 1/1 background traits are called Green, On The Beach, Supermarket, Trick Or Treating, and Underwater. These are the most expensive traits in the collection, each selling for at least 69 ETH and four of five selling at some point in time for triple digit ETH.
The left-facing Pudgy Penguin with the Green background trait sold for 400 ETH on Aug. 22, 2022, the largest sale in the collection’s history.
The five unique 1/1 Pudgy Penguins also have 1/1 body traits: Banana Suit, Mirrored, Pillow Case, Pineapple Suit, and Shark Suit. Aside from these top-tier traits, the Kimono traits (including Gold (44), Ice (22), and Abstract (53)) and the Pudgy Man (44) superhero trait are the most expensive and sought after, trading at nearly three to five times the project’s floor price.
Only three of the five unique 1/1 Pudgy Penguins also have 1/1 face traits: Agitated, Mirrored, and Pillow Case. The only other face trait that stands out and trades well above the project’s floor price is Star Struck (22), which replaces the penguins’ eyes with stars.
Four of the five unique 1/1 Pudgy Penguins also have 1/1 head traits: Banana Suit, Normal, Pineapple Suit, and Shark Suit. There are eight total head traits that trade well above the project’s floor price: Flower Crown (66), Crown (58), Hatched (53), Egg Gold (45), Fish Orange (44), Fish Gold (22), Ice Crown (14), and Hatched Gold (9).
Finally, there is only one unique 1/1 Pudgy Penguin that also has a 1/1 skin trait: Black. This is the left-facing Green background trait penguin that sold for 400 ETH. The rest of the 1/1 Pudgy Penguins have the Navy Blue skin trait. And aside from those two traits, only two other traits trade well above the project’s floor price: Gold (44) and Ice (22).
