A few days ago, I tweeted that I was planning to acquire a chubby penguin NFT, and many friends asked why. Aren’t NFTs already outdated? Why spend so much money on them now?
Most Chinese users first learned about Pengu because of the $PENGU airdrop in 2024. That airdrop was incredibly generous—almost universally inclusive. Even if you didn’t own a Pengu NFT, simply having traded on Solana early enough could have earned you $PENGU worth hundreds of dollars.
Truly astonishing were the Pudgy Penguins NFT holders, whose NFT floor price surged to over 30 ETH just before the airdrop. Each Pudgy Penguin NFT could claim approximately 1.7 million tokens, while each Lil Pudgy NFT could claim around 188,000 tokens. At the prevailing token prices at the time, one Pudgy Penguin was worth tens of thousands of dollars, peaking above $100,000, and a single Lil Pudgy exceeded $10,000 at its peak. For on-chain influencers like @wenxue600, who owned many such NFTs, receiving an airdrop worth millions of dollars was hardly an exaggeration based on their holdings.
But many brothers don’t understand the story behind the airdrop after claiming it.
$PENGU is not a meme token that suddenly appeared out of nowhere—its chubby penguin once nearly perished during the wildest days of NFTs.
In 2022, the floor price of Pudgy Penguins dropped to around 0.5 ETH, and the community even voted to oust the founder. Four years later, it expanded into 3,100 Walmart stores across the U.S., launched collaborations with Manchester City and the NHL, and introduced a payment card integrated with the Visa network, with a revenue target of $120 million by 2026.
This might be the most outrageous revival in Web3 history.
How did Pudgy Penguins survive? The story begins in 2021, when 8,888 Pudgy Penguins were sold for 0.03 ETH each and sold out in under 20 minutes. Less than a month after launch, The New York Times published a dedicated article. At the time, almost no one doubted it would become the next NFT blue-chip.
But what truly makes Pudgy special isn't how it took off, but how it fell—and then climbed back up.
By the end of 2021, the promised games, tokens, and ecosystem had still not materialized. The mysterious egg ultimately hatched into a fishing rod, and the community turned "Rods" into "Rogs" as a subtle jab at the project being a rug pull.
More seriously, a crisis of trust emerged, with the original team accused of draining the treasury and planning to sell the project before exiting. By January 2022, holders directly initiated a vote on Discord to remove founder Cole. For the first time, an NFT community acted like shareholders, voting out its own founder.
But getting rid of the founders doesn’t mean the project can survive. At the time, Pudgy’s floor price dropped as low as approximately 0.5 ETH, the community fractured, the project treasury was nearly empty, and some holders even used Wrapped Penguins to bypass the original team’s royalties. That penguin wasn’t just “facing difficulties”—it was truly on the brink of disappearing.
The turning point occurred in April 2022, when @LucaNetz purchased the IP and operational rights to Pudgy Penguins for 750 ETH, worth approximately $2.5 million at the time. This transaction was later widely regarded as Web3’s most successful CTO (Community Takeover).
But the reality after taking over was far from ideal, even brutally harsh. Luca later recalled: when the team took over, the account was nearly empty, and they immediately faced the collapse of the NFT bubble—trading volume plummeted by 95%, ETH dropped by about 80%, and the royalty model collapsed. At the lowest point, 80% of the team went without pay for 11 consecutive months.
Pudgy’s turnaround wasn’t about changing leadership and simply lifting the NFT floor price. What it truly got right was no longer treating NFT price as the product, but instead treating the characters behind the NFTs as a genuine consumer IP.
In 2023, Pudgy Toys began entering Amazon and Walmart, and within less than a year, its products were stocked in 3,100 Walmart stores nationwide. Each toy features a QR code that guides even consumers unfamiliar with wallets or NFTs into the Pudgy World. Interestingly, these physical toys feature penguin designs owned by the community, and eligible NFT holders receive IP licensing revenue.
In other words, NFT holders aren't just buying an image—they're participating in the creation and distribution of brand value. This is the crucial step that took Pudgy from OpenSea to Walmart.
Now consider 2026: Pudgy’s roadmap has become increasingly unlike a traditional NFT project:
- Partner with the NHL to host an offline event at the 2026 Winter Classic;
- Launched a collaborative collection and merchandise with Manchester City, and expanded the partnership after completing the first phase.
- Launched the Pengu Card, integrated with the Visa payment network, supporting Apple Pay and Google Pay, and accessible at approximately 150 million merchants worldwide; the virtual card quickly gained 100,000 registrations.
- The free web game Pudgy World has officially launched, and the digital content obtained by scanning codes after purchasing physical toys now has real-world utility.
- Vibes TCG collectible card sales have exceeded 4 million copies.
The CEO set a 2026 revenue target of $120 million and has publicly expressed a desire to take the company public before 2027. When viewed together, the entire roadmap becomes clear: NFTs brought the first owners and advocates; toys introduced the brand into ordinary households; social media and memes ensured the penguin image continued to spread; games, cards, and payment products expanded use cases; and $PENGU lowered the barrier to participation from an expensive NFT to a much broader internet community.
The reason the NFT bubble burst is that most NFT projects ultimately failed because they couldn’t answer: “What do we do after selling the images?” Pudgy nearly died there too, but it survived—because it stopped relying on the next group of people to buy at higher prices and instead began addressing a more important question: Can this penguin become a genuine brand that people like, buy into, and actually use?
So, I want to buy a Fat Penguin NFT not just because NFTs have surged again recently. Although I didn’t own a Fat Penguin NFT back then, simply by using Solana extensively, I received a数千-dollar $PENGU airdrop. Now, going back to acquire one NFT as a credential of identity for this IP and community feels like a great choice to me.
We’ve also noticed that the Pudgy Penguin Chinese community, @PudgyChina, is relaunching. When the market is bullish, everyone talks about prices—but bear markets are when it’s best to seriously build a community. If you’re interested, follow: @PudgyChina @pudgypenguins @LucaNetz