Pudgy Penguins, a well-known NFT collection, extends its reach. The team announced that it will launch a new token, PENGU, on Solana’s blockchain by the end of the year as the floor price for their NFTs breaks records in past years at $62,000.
What is PENGU?
PENGU is a new cryptocurrency attached to the Pudgy Penguins ecosystem. 88 billion units will be minted as follows:
- 23.5% to current Pudgy Penguins holders who also have Lil Pudgys and Pudgy Rods
- 22.02% through broader Solana and Ethereum communities
- 12.32% for liquidity on decentralized exchanges
The token has been described as a “Master Coin,” represented by a golden egg in the lore of the collection.
Pudgy Penguins – A Rising Star
The Pudgy Penguins NFT collection, released in 2021 with a total of 8,888 unique pieces, featured a super cute and proud visual appeal that put it among the top NFT collections by market cap. Despite all the chaos in the NFT space, Pudgy Penguins today stand at a staggering $550 million market cap.
Thanks to the market rally that saw Bitcoin’s price crest above $100,000, the floor price jumped more than 40% this week to an all-time high.
Why Solana?
Launching PENGU on Solana is an opportunity for Pudgy Penguins to change lanes. As they progressively shift their attention from NFTs to meme coins and fungible tokens, this token launch is part of that transition.
This directional shift, hinted at via a post on social media, states:
“The Tides Are Shifting. A New Beginning Approaches.”
Beyond NFTs
Pudgy Penguins do not just produce digital art anymore. The brand has made sales of physical toys worth 10 million through retail stores like Walmart, Target, and Walgreens.
The PENGU token launch signified a pivot into the pathway, as market interest for not just NFTs but fungible tokens and meme coins begins to sprout.
“Strong forces are shifting, and a new dawn is upon us,” wrote Pudgy Penguins in X (formerly Twitter), pointing to this shift.
The new plan recognizes liquidity challenges generally affiliated with historical NFT trading while increasing the brand presence that the Pudgy Penguins have with 32 billion Giphy views and over 3 million social media followers.
Bull runs in the crypto industry have fired up NFTs now, reported Decrypt on Monday. The surge has pushed the NFT market capitalization to about $8.6 billion, CoinGecko noted, while the weekly Ethereum NFT trading volume doubled from $101 million.
The project started its rebranding in 2022 as an NFT collection struggling for survival after Luca Netz had acquired it. In July, Netz remarked about coming ambitious growth in that it may exceed 200 ETH (approximately $780,000 in existing rates) as a floor price during this market cycle.
Although the project plans to integrate with Abstract, an Ethereum Layer-2 solution, right now it focuses on making a space for PENGU within the Solana ecosystem.
