Since gracing the cover of the New York Times, Pudgy Penguins have been on a rollercoaster ride. Originally a cute profile picture NFT collection, Pudgy Penguins endured the ousting of its founder before finding mainstream success, with licensed toys landing on the shelves of Walmart and Target stores nationwide.
Launched amid the NFT boom in 2021, the collection and its ecosystem of companions has become the face of Web3, garnering millions of social impressions and exploding beyond the relatively small sector of crypto participants on X (formerly known as Twitter).
Here’s everything you need to know about Pudgy Penguins.
What are Pudgy Penguins?
A collection of 8,888 flightless bird NFTs, Pudgy Penguins first launched in July 2021, selling out shortly after launch for a price of 0.03 ETH, or around $90 at the time, according to data from NFT Price Floor.
The collection quickly gained acclaim, gracing the cover of the New York Times in August 2021 after columnist Kevin Roose shared his experience in “joining the Huddle.”
In just a few months after its mint, the collection held a floor price, or the lowest listed asset on the marketplace, of more than $6,000 according to NFT Price Floor. That price would dip towards $1,000 through the next six months amid the subsiding of NFT mania and some unrest within its community, leading to the ousting of its founder and a leadership turnover.
All change at the top
Restlessness in the Pudgy Penguins community grew throughout the early months of 2022 in part due to criticisms of its project founder, Cole Villemain, who goes by ColeThereum on X.
Allegations of mismanagement and more led to distrust between the founding team and the community.
As displeasure with the team grew increasingly loud, the project held a community vote which led to the removal of Villemain and takeover offers from the community.
One offer came from Netz Capital’s Luca Netz, who publicly offered around $2.5 million, or 750 ETH, in January 2022.
750 ETH for @Pudgy_Penguins by the NFT degenerates. Make your move @ColeThereum
— Luca Netz 🐧✳️ (@LucaNetz) January 6, 2022
Months later, that offer was accepted and Netz purchased the project and its intellectual property for the amount, tweeting that he was “looking forward to spreading love.”
After Netz’ acquisition, the Pudgy Penguins floor price quickly rebounded, jumping from about $4,300 on the day of the announcement to $8,900 three days later.
Under new leadership, the project quickly installed a new roadmap and began the journey to establishing itself as a leading NFT project.
Pudgy Penguins: from NFTs to toys
One of the first major initiatives led by the new leadership was launching a Pudgy Toys line.
The project announced its intentions to work with PMI Toys in July 2022, for which it licensed Pudgy Penguin NFTs via its OverpassIP project, allowing holders to directly benefit from the usage of their Pudgy NFTs in commercial endeavors such as the physical toys.
The first toyline launched in May 2023 and could be purchased directly on Amazon, but it later expanded to include major retail partnerships with Walmart, Target, Walgreens, and more.
Just a year after rollout, Pudgy Toys had sold more than 750,000 units, according to the company, bringing in more than $10 million in the process.
Building the Pudgy Penguins brand
Since Netz took over the Pudgy Penguins have been hard at work to reach as many eyeballs around the world as possible and proliferate the brand.
One major focus for Pudgy Penguins has been in growing its social media channels to reach more consumers. The project had around 100,000 Instagram followers in July 2022, but it has since increased that following to 1.7 million as of January 2025 while amassing more than 39 billion GIF shares, according to data from GIPHY.
Efforts to spur the brand even further were buoyed when it raised $9 million in 2023 shortly after signing with talent agency WME.
Since that time, it’s also gone on to notch collaborations with brands like PEZ, CD Castellon, and Last Crumb (as well as MYRIAD, the prediction market from Decrypt’s parent company DASTAN).
PENGU: The Pudgy Penguins token
In November 2024, the project announced it would launch an ecosystem token on Solana as a way to better align incentives between the brand and its fans. The PENGU token was claimable for Pudgy Penguin NFT holders and a wide range of other Web3 communities and active crypto participants.
The token launched in December 2024, granting holders of Pudgy Penguins NFTs with 1.7 million PENGU tokens, worth more than $100,000 at the token’s all-time high as recorded by CoinGecko.
Beyond Pudgy Penguins: the other NFTs
It’s not just “big Pudgys” that make up the Penguin NFT ecosystem.
Lil Pudgys
The Pudgy Penguins ecosystem first grew with the launch of Lil Pudgys.
A companion was claimable for free for each of the 8,888 Pudgy Penguins NFTs, with another batch of Lil Pudgys going on sale to the general public for a total of 22,222 smaller versions of the original NFT.
In January 2023, the collection went “cross-chain” as part of the project’s partnership with interoperability platform LayerZero. Holders were able to transport their Lil’ Pudgys via a bridge in an effort to expand the Penguin IP.
“By enabling the Lil Pudgys to go cross-chain, we’re setting up the Pudgy Penguins ecosystem to reach millions of people,” the project wrote.
Lil Pudgys can bridge from Ethereum mainnet to Arbitrum, Polygon, or Binance Smart Chain.
Pudgy Rods (Rogs)
Pudgy Rods are a collection of fishing rod NFTs that were gifted to Pudgy Penguin holders in 2021.
The collection was initially named “Pudgy Presents,” but later changed to Pudgy Rods after fishing rods hatched from the eggs which previously populated the metadata for the NFTs.
The mismatch of fishing rods hatching from an egg was met with confusion from the community and added to the tension between the founding team and ecosystem participants that arose in late 2021.
Since that time, the Rods have found their home as the third NFT in the Pudgy hierarchy, granting holders similar benefits to those of the original Pudgys, like a PENGU token claim, albeit at smaller scales.
The future of Pudgy Penguins
Though the project already has big accomplishments under its belt, Netz has big plans for the project in the future.
The project’s parent company, Igloo Inc., is actively building out Pudgy World—a Web3 playground and storytelling universe that houses mini-games and customizable Penguins with a direct link to Pudgy Toys, which provide a QR code to get new users onboarded.
Beyond Pudgy World, the project is also working on Pudgy Party, a mobile royale game built together with Mythical Games.
