Pudgy Penguins Fly as Floor Price Triples

It’s been quite the roller-coaster ride for Pudgy Penguins. This week the collection’s floor price has tripled, briefly surpassing its peak in September 2021 with a high of 3.73 ETH ($12,000) yesterday, according to data from niftyprice.io.

The NFT collection featuring 8,888 flightless denizens of the Antarctic in various forms has once again found favour with investors after closing a deal with US-based entrepreneur Luca Netz for 750 ETH ($2.4M).

Royalty Rights

Announced on Apr. 2, the sale had been in the works for some time, and will see a team headed by Netz take over operational control and royalty rights from the original team of four co-founders. “Everything is aligned to make this one of the most prevalent projects of all time,” Netz told CoinDesk.

Prices have since settled and the floor Penguin is currently listed at 3.09 ETH ($10,000).

Pudgy Penguins took the NFT world by storm soon after they launched last summer. Influencers loved the birds and Crypto Twitter was dominated by penguin profile pictures for a time. Prices rose and the collection was even featured in The New York Times.

The founding team led by ColeThereum, a figure with a questionable past, published an ambitious roadmap that included airdrops for holders, a metaverse game and, naturally, a token.

Things started to go wrong in December when the much-hyped Pudgy Presents airdrop turned out to be a set of clumsily-made fishing rods.

Fire on the Iceberg: Pudgy Penguin Holders Eye Coup Amid Acquisition Talks

Fire on the Iceberg: Pudgy Penguin Holders Eye Coup Amid Acquisition Talks

A potential coup in the Pudgy Punks NFT community highlights the forces at work in the space.

The Defiant

With the community expecting a metaverse game and prices down by two-thirds from their September peak, holders decided to take matters into their own hands.

The deal with Netz was floated in January, and other interested parties included noted NFT collector 9x9x9.

Earlier today, the new team paid homage to the original artist behind the collection, who was paid a flat fee for the artwork and did not get to share in the substantial royalties generated by secondary sales. He will be rejoining the project as its lead artist.