The Pudgy Penguins NFT collection is keeping Web3 hopes afloat in a sea of dead NFT projects and a generally muted collectibles market.
The non-fungible token set became the world’s second most-valued NFTs on Wednesday, with the minimum — or floor — price for any of the 8,888 comic penguins topping $100,000 and flipping the collections’ value above its comic monkey forerunner, the Bored Apes Yacht Club.
That means buying a single NFT now costs more than a bitcoin, which currently trades at just over $100,000.
The floor price has jumped 76% in the past seven days to over 26 ether (ETH), or just above $105,000. Bored Apes and CryptoPunks — the most valued NFTs — both fell 12% in the same period.
Demand for the NFTs surged after a CoinDesk exclusive on Pudgy Penguin’s plans to release a PENGU token on the Solana blockchain later this month. The token allocation strategy includes a substantial share for existing NFT holders, which may have incentivized current owners to hold or increase their investments, driving up demand.
Nearly a quarter — 23.5% — of the 88 billion PENGU tokens will be reserved for owners of the project’s NFT collections such as Pudgy Penguins, Lil Pudgys and Pudgy Rods. A further 22% will be available to the Solana and Ethereum communities, and 12% will be set aside to provide liquidity on decentralized exchanges.
In the NFT market, the floor price is the cheapest cost of an NFT within a specific collection. It is fixed by the NFT’s owner based on market forces such as demand or rarity of traits in the collection. The floor remains in place until a lower one is set.
This is different from the general token or stock market, where demand and supply automatically change prices every second, instead of a single holder deciding the minimum price for an asset.
Pudgy Penguins came into existence in 2021. Each penguin is hand-drawn and features distinctive traits such as backgrounds, body, face, head and skin.
The collection has successfully expanded its presence beyond just digital collectibles into physical products and mainstream branding.
Parent company Igloo last year introduced Pudgy Toys, a toy line based on the digital art collection. It has since sold more than $10 million in collectible igloos and plushies through major retailers including Walmart, Target, Amazon and Walgreens.