On December 27, four Pudgies were sold for 40, 33, 27, and 25 ETH as part of a larger 175 ETH floor sweep

Volatility in the vast universe of NFTs and cryptocurrencies isn't always just volatility; occasionally, sharp increases in a digital asset's value may indicate future, sustainable growth. Pudgy Penguins' floor price increased by nearly 400 percent in August 2022, and since then, it has been steadily rising. According to information gathered by CoinGecko, Pudgy Penguin's floor price increased by more than 50% in a single week (from December 22 to December 28), rising from 4.50 ETH to 6.92 ETH as of writing.

On December 27, four Pudgies were sold for 40, 33, 27, and 25 ETH as part of a larger 175 ETH floor sweep, which brought the project into the 6+ ETH bracket. And it's not over yet.

What started as an increase in price in August has grown into what might be a significant and long-term expansion for the project. The rise occurs at the conclusion of a year in which the Pudgy project itself was sold off in a multi-million dollar deal, handing it over to new management just as confidence in its founding team was eroding. What specifically occurred to Pudgy Penguins, though, that its current redemption is so potent and potentially a sign of how larger NFT projects ought to be managed going forward?

What on earth is a Pudgy Penguin, exactly?

Following the enormous success of the Bored Ape Yacht Club during the NFT market's animal-themed PFP project bull run in 2021, Pudgy Penguins swiftly upended the NFT ecosystem. You guessed it—a collection of chubby penguin avatars—makes up the project.

A Pudgy Penguin avatar would be nice, too. But where can I get one?

First, choose where to get them; your two top choices are OpenSea and LooksRare. Then, after creating an account with Coinbase or Gemini and funding it with cryptocurrency, you're prepared to make purchases.

Are any still available for me? What number of puffy penguins exist?

There are 8,888, and the first mint has long since run out. But fortunately, there is a brisk secondary market on NFT platforms like OpenSea. Following its release, the community embraced it so enthusiastically that one collector even paid a cool 225 ETH for their penguin in September 2021, which was about $1 million at the time.

Sadly, the Pudgy Penguins initiative had a lot of potential in the months following its debut, but its momentum quickly waned.

The decline of the Pudgy Penguins

The rug pull, which occurs when a project's founders abscond with funds that backers gave in good faith to help it develop, is possibly the biggest faux pas in the NFT arena. A project's worth can be severely damaged by even the tiniest rumor that its creators may engage in such behavior. That's exactly what happened when the Pudgy Penguins community learned that the original team had spent all of the project's finances in late 2021.

Pudgy Penguin rug-pulling rumors

However, several people in the greater NFT community weren't shocked by this development because ColeThereum, the creator of Pudgy Penguins, had already been caught acting in a way that was scam-like before the release of this PFP collection. Several of the project's most famous participants immediately turned to social media to express their worries about the project's future after learning of the founders' recent and previous actions. In particular, 9x9x9, who by January 2022 supposedly possessed over 200 Pudgy Penguin NFTs, sent out a flurry of tweets in which they openly lambasted the founding team for the way it had treated its members and for seemingly wanting to jump ship.

9x9x9 openly announced that they had turned down an offer to buy the IP to the collection outright for 888 ETH following rumors that they would take over as the project's leader in place of the Pudgy Penguins founders. Thankfully, 9x9x9's efforts to make things right for the Pudgy Penguins community were not in vain because another member stepped up to do so.

Resulting from new leadership, a comeback

The Pudgy Penguins team completed a sale in April 2022 and turned over project management. Luca Schnetzler, a devoted supporter of the project and its community, purchased the collection for 750 ETH (approximately $2.5 million). Schnetzler remarked in a conversation with nft, "Pudgy Penguins was my first PFP NFT, and I knew when I originally bought it that Pudgy Penguins had the most upside when it comes to brand potential." "I knew I had to intervene when I observed other individuals placing bids on Pudgy Penguins. Over the last five years, I've brought several brands to nine figures in sales, and I thought my skill set was the greatest.

The events that followed have been dubbed "the greatest comeback story" to have occurred in the space so far by several members of the NFT community. The project's new leadership positioned the Pudgy Penguins IP as a serious player in the four months following the acquisition. The current management team has been working hard to provide the community with new opportunities to show their support for the project, whether via media or retail. They have also been looking for ways to onboard new users into the quickly expanding community via a strong social media presence.

Additionally, Schnetzler has demonstrated a profound awareness of the Pudgy Penguins IP's broader appeal by referring to it as "a feel-good brand." Schnetzler has concentrated on rebranding initiatives to leverage the IP's capacity to "uplift people and make their day a little simpler" in service of this.

Fans of currently problematic NFT projects may have new grounds to hope for a turnaround for their supported projects as the project continues to fall in and out of OpenSea's top 10 volume ranking list. Hopefully, after a collapse, truly "dead" projects will no longer be the norm but rather the exception in the future.

"I believe [Pudgy Penguins' newfound success] can be recreated with the proper team and IP. When all is said and done, I hope people will take a look at what we did with Pudgy and open the doors for top-tier Web2 talent to really consider this space, said Schnetzler. Let's hope that he is accurate.