Pudgy Penguins (PENGU)

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Historical price evolution of Pudgy Penguins

Daily historical data. Updated automatically.

Pudgy Penguins was born on 22nd July 2021, when a group of four university students —Clayton Patterson (alias "ColeThereum"), Cole Villemain, Mickyj and Jonah— launched the collection on Ethereum. The 8,888 penguin NFTs randomly generated from more than 150 traits were minted at 0.03 ETH each, selling out in 19 minutes. In August of that year, the project gained notoriety when New York Times journalist Kevin Roose published an article about the collection and the metaverse, and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian acquired one of the NFTs. During this period, an individual NFT (#6873) sold for 225 ETH, equivalent to approximately 775,000 USD.

However, by December 2021 the project began to show signs of strain. Community moderator Darth left the initiative denouncing "unprofessional" behaviour from the founders. The Lil Pudgys (22,222 NFTs) and Pudgy Rods collections were launched, both with disappointing reception, whilst rumours began to circulate about misuse of project funds. The crisis intensified in January 2022, when influencer 9x9x9eth alleged that the founders attempted to sell the project after emptying the treasury. The accusations triggered a community vote in which the majority demanded the founders' departure.

In April 2022, entrepreneur Luca "Netz" Schnetzler —with previous experience at Ring Doorbell, Von Dutch and various e-commerce businesses with nine-figure revenues— acquired the entire project for 750 ETH, approximately 2.5 million USD. Under his leadership, in September 2022 Schnetzler raised 9 million USD in a seed round led by 1kx to develop Pudgy Penguins as an intellectual property brand. In January 2023, the project established a partnership with LayerZero to enable Lil Pudgys on Polygon, BNB Smart Chain and Arbitrum.

The project experienced significant expansion into physical products in May 2023 with the launch of Pudgy Toys: 100,000 physical plushies priced between 5 and 35 USD distributed across 16 SKUs, each with a QR code connecting to the digital world Pudgy World. The toys generated more than 500,000 USD in two days, quickly became Amazon's best-selling category in baby plushies and achieved presence in Walmart. During 2023, official Pudgy Penguins GIFs on GIPHY surpassed 50,000 million views, more than Hello Kitty and Pokémon.

17th December 2024 marked another important milestone with the launch of the PENGU token on Solana, with a total supply of 88,888,888,888 tokens. An airdrop was conducted to holders of Pudgy Penguins, Lil Pudgys and Pudgy Rods NFTs, in addition to selected Solana and Ethereum wallets. PENGU opened at approximately 0.061 USD, rose to 0.068 USD and fell below 0.031 USD within hours due to network overload. On launch day, transactions on Solana reached 66.9 million, establishing a historic record. Previously, in March 2024, Canary Capital had filed an S-1 application with the SEC for a hybrid ETF composed of 80-95% PENGU tokens and 5-15% Pudgy Penguins NFTs, the first of its kind in the United States.

In the most recent developments, July 2025 saw the arrival of Pudgy Toys at Don Quijote stores in Japan, with CEO Luca Netz stating that "the future is in Asia" and projecting annualised retail revenues of approximately 50 million USD. On 10th July 2025, the SEC acknowledged receipt of Canary Capital's ETF application, which resulted in a rise in PENGU of more than 70% in the following 30 days. In 2026, the ecosystem continued expanding: on 21st February cross-chain integration was implemented via Rhea Finance to trade PENGU between Solana and BNB Chain, and on 9th March Pudgy World was launched, an open-world browser game running on Abstract L2 (the Ethereum layer 2 developed by Igloo Inc. after raising 11 million USD in October 2024), where QR codes from physical toys unlock digital traits. In April 2026, analysts noted that a 40% rise in PENGU may have been orchestrated to absorb the unlock of 703 million tokens on 17th April, with the token trading approximately 80% below its all-time high from December 2024.

Pudgy Penguins operates as a two-layer ecosystem that combines traditional NFTs with a multi-blockchain utility token. The first layer consists of a collection of 8,888 ERC-721 NFTs on Ethereum, each representing a penguin with algorithmically generated characteristics. The owners of these NFTs obtain licensing rights for personal non-commercial use of the image, access to "The Huddle" community, eligibility for future airdrops and royalties on secondary sales. The second layer is the PENGU token, a Solana native token with bridges to Ethereum and Abstract, which has a total supply of 88,888,888,888 units distributed primarily amongst the Pudgy Penguins community (25.9%) and other communities (24.12%).

The PENGU token functions as a governance and utility currency within the ecosystem, allowing holders to vote on project decisions and receive distributions linked to brand activity, although without granting rights over the company Igloo Inc. Its primary use case occurs in Pudgy World, an open-world game built on Abstract L2, where PENGU serves as internal currency for high-speed transactions without Ethereum Mainnet fees. The project's adoption strategy is based on a "phygital" (physical + digital) model: each Pudgy Toy plush toy includes a QR code that directs buyers towards Pudgy World, where they can unlock digital features for their avatars. The token follows a scheduled release calendar with approximately 703 million tokens unlocked monthly, maintaining significant concentration amongst the early large holders.

Data verified against external sources. Some values may have changed since the last update.