The floor price for the Pudgy Penguins NFT project surged, and sales pumped up after selected penguins from the collection were turned into physical toys.
On Thursday, the long-standing Pudgy Penguins NFT project announced that it would start licensing select penguin NFTs from the collection and make these into physical toy collectibles. As a result, sales of the NFT project surged, and its floor price has seen a rise, too.
Pudgy Penguins’ official Twitter account introduced the “Pudgy Toys Lineup” and said it is “licensed directly from the community.” The tweet also hinted that the lineup is “the first of many instances” wherein the Pudgy Penguins IP would be in the center of a Web2 and Web3 fusion.
And while only a few Penguins from the collection were chosen to have their “in real life” (IRL) counterparts, the tweet hinted that there’s more to come.
What Are the Pudgy Penguin NFTs?
The Pudgy Penguins are a collection of 8,888 NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain created by Clayton Patterson in the summer of 2021. He conceptualized the project while studying as a computer science major at the University of Central Florida.
Pudgy Penguins NFTs are generative NFTs, which means each penguin’s appearance ranges in rarity. Attributes of the penguins are combined with others, thus creating an online avatar.
When the collection was launched on July 22, 2021, the plump, pudgy penguins immediately showed their worth and instantly gained traction. Within 20 minutes of the public sale, they sold out at Ξ 0.03 each (at the time, it converted to under $100).
At this time of writing, the Pudgy Penguins NFTs’ floor price is Ξ 2.68, or roughly $5,080, a 17.44% increase from yesterday’s floor price and a 56.46% increase from 30 days ago, as per Omnimint’s data. The collection had about Ξ 256.11 (about $485,460) worth of sales over the last 24 hours. That’s an 89% increase from the day before, based on data from OpenSea.
Icy Road for the Penguins
However, it hasn’t always been smooth sailing for the Pudgy Penguins NFTs. A decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) governed the project, and it’s common knowledge that when you set up a DAO, you practically give NFT holders voting power.
That happened when, barely six months from its launch, the DAO voted to oust its founders for allegedly failing to deliver on the project’s goals and draining the DAO treasury. In particular, Cole Villemain, one of its founders, was put on the spot when his purported history of abusing customers and mishandling projects was laid bare.
Ultimately, in April, the project was sold to Luca Netz of Netz Capital for Ξ 750, or roughly $2.5 million at the time. The community was bullish that Netz’s entry would mark a new chapter in Pudgy Penguins NFTs’ Web3 journey. Netz’s entry revitalized the community’s efforts to take control of the collection’s future.
Surprising Move
The Pudgy Penguins NFT collection’s announcement of the IRL toys caught many by surprise, considering there is an ongoing debate in the NFT space about holders’ licensing rights. The debate was sparked by Moonbirds NFTs’ switch to a CC0, or creative commons, license, leading to its floor price tanking.
To those unfamiliar with the term, a CC0 license allows just about anyone to use the creative rights behind an NFT project’s artwork to create commercial products. That is different from the licenses of Pudgy Penguins NFTs and blue-chip collections like the Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunks, where only holders of the NFTs have the rights to the artwork.
It remains to be seen how receptive the public will be to Pudgy Toys.
Get more news updates
Get more NFT news updates at Omnimint News. For more information on Omnimint, and details on how to join our community, please follow our Twitter, or subscribe to our Telegram channel for more updates, and please feel free to submit your article.