In the lead-up to the new PENGU token launch Tuesday, the floor price of the Pudgy Penguins NFT was above 30 ETH worth about $120,000, exceeding the price of BTC, but in the following hours after the PENGU genesis event, the NFTs of the cute, flightless birds saw their floor price drop substantially.
The lowest acquisition price of the Pudgy Penguins NFT decreased roughly 50% from 30.99 ETH at 7:55 a.m. EST on Tuesday to 15.9 ETH at the time of writing, market data from blockchain analytics firm Nansen shows.
The drawdown in floor price comes immediately after the crypto users were able to start claiming their PENGU token. “Flippers will flip,” wrote Glenn Rothwell, a sales development manager at developer platform Alchemy who also dons a Pudgy Penguin as his profile profile on X and Telegram. “It was inevitable that people would buy [the NFT] for the airdrop [and look] to dump.”
Despite the recent downswing, “we still have a lot of bull market in 2025 to look forward to and penguins will continue to deliver with the Abstract launch,” Rothwell told Unchained. Abstract is an Ethereum L2 network developed by Igloo Inc., the parent firm of Pudgy Penguins.
“[The] penguin floor is still higher than it was just a short time ago so no need to worry,” Rothwell added. The floor price of the penguin NFTs is 50% higher than when it was at the start of the year at 10.4 ETH, per Nansen. The Pudgy Penguins NFTs are also currently the fourth largest NFT collection by market cap at 181,747 ETH worth about $727 million, trailing CryptoPunks, Pandora, and Bored Ape Yacht Club.
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The PENGU token already has a fully diluted valuation of $2.6 billion at presstime with more than 200,000 holders, data from block explorer Solscan shows. The fully diluted valuation of the new cryptocurrency makes it the sixth largest memecoin trailing DOGE, SHIB, PEPE, BONK, and WIF, per CoinGecko.
BONK, the largest memecoin on the Solana blockchain by fully diluted valuation at $3.6 billion, has been trading for roughly two years and has more than 862,000 holders.
According to the Pudgy Penguins website, “PENGU is the token for the people, by the people and serves as a way for the ever-expanding group of 100s of millions of Pudgy Penguin fans to align themselves with the story and future of Pudgy Penguins.”
Substantial Wealth Generation Plus Broad Distribution
The PENGU token launch has had a positive reception in part due to its wealth generation event. For example, holders who owned a single Pudgy Penguin NFT each received 1.7 million PENGU tokens, which at current prices is worth nearly $52,000.
Simon Dedic, the CEO of investment firm Moonrock Capital who sports a penguin NFT as his X avatar, expressed gratitude to Luca Netz, the CEO of Pudgy Penguins. “Thanks, @LucaNetz, for the biggest airdrop I’ve received in 7 years of crypto – just for holding adorable Penguins that I truly believe in,” Dedic said on X. Other notable crypto figures wearing a Pudgy Penguins NFT includes Nansen CEO Alex Svanevik and the X account of ETF provider VanEck.
Meanwhile, PENGU had a broad distribution, as even those who put little to zero effort into attaining the airdrop were eligible.
With a total supply of 88,888,888,888, PENGU was allocated to various parties within the crypto ecosystem. OG ETH and SOL users were eligible to claim a portion of PENGU, while 0.35% of the PENGU supply was allocated to holders of FTT, the token associated with bankrupt crypto exchange FTX. The Pudgy community received 25.9% of the token’s supply and the current team behind Pudgy Penguins received 17.8% with a one-year cliff and three-year vesting schedule.
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“[The PENGU token launch was] a remarkable achievement for Luca and team – from acquiring the project and raising it from the ashes in 2022, to proliferating the penguin globally across social media and retail stores, and now rewarding the community while continuing to proliferate the penguin in new ecosystems like Solana,” Rothwell wrote.
In Feb. 2024, Pudgy Penguins announced the expansion of its plushy toys to 3,100 Walmart stores in the U.S. Additionally, Pudgy Penguins across TikTok, X, and Instagram has nearly 2.6 million followers, with Instagram being the most followed account.
Not Entirely Smooth Sailing for Solana
At the same time, the rollout of PENGU on Solana has not been entirely smooth as some have shared on X various transaction errors resulting in their inability to claim their tokens. “Literally had about ~10 transactions just flat out fail or completely timeout trying to claim $PENGU on Solana this morning,” wrote Brock Miller, a builder at crypto exchange Coinbase, on X early Tuesday.
Mert Mumtaz, the CEO of Solana-based developer firm Helius, noted a few issues, of which some are related to wallet connectivity and token amounts not showing properly. “The biggest issue seems to be the web2 claim API degraded,” said Mumtaz, adding that “we’re working with the team… which should be quick fixes.”
