Author: Nancy, PANews
On the evening of December 17, the highly anticipated leading NFT project Pudgy Penguins announced its launch and launched airdrops, which have received over 100,000 applications. The short-term high traffic also caused the application API to malfunction. The airdrop has been resumed after a brief suspension. Binance data shows that the opening price of the token PENGU reached a high of $0.07, and the FDV (fully diluted valuation) reached a high of $6.2 billion. The price has now fallen back.
From the perspective of airdrop qualification query, users can add multiple wallet addresses for query at one time, including Fat Penguin series NFT holders, Ethereum/Solana OG players, its L2 Abstract Enjoyers and various chain Explorers, etc. can all get PENGU token airdrops. The more conditions are met, the more airdrops they will get.
Judging from the orders posted by various players, in addition to the NFT holders who have made considerable profits and obtained profits worth tens of thousands to millions of dollars, there are also veteran players who have won a valuable "pork trotter meal" with multiple addresses. Of course, some users have "got nothing" after querying dozens of addresses. In addition to the high returns brought by airdrops, there are also experienced traders who make huge profits through on-chain price differences. According to Lookonchain monitoring, a trader made a profit of 36,984 SOL (about 8.36 million US dollars) by trading PENGU in less than 20 minutes. There are also giant whales buying in large quantities. Lookonchain monitoring shows that a whale spent 15,300 SOL (3.46 million US dollars) to buy 6.47 million PENGU tokens, with an average price of 0.053 US dollars.
It is worth mentioning that according to the detection of Aunt Ai, an on-chain analyst, wallets associated with the PENGU project (or early investors) are selling large amounts on the chain and have sold PENGU worth US$8.74 million.
During this airdrop boom, Pudgy Penguins not only successfully pushed up the price of its NFT, but also further expanded its community and ecological influence. However, the interest stimulation brought by the airdrop also triggered a lot of speculative behavior, causing dissatisfaction in the community.
Use airdrops to boost NFT prices and expand the community
With its flexible airdrop mechanism and extensive token distribution strategy, Pudgy Penguins has attracted a lot of attention over the past period of time and actively expanded its community size and ecological influence.
On the one hand, unlike most projects that determine airdrop qualifications through snapshots, Pudgy Penguins' airdrop has no time limit. The token PENGU can be allocated to related NFTs as soon as it goes online, and holders have 88 days to apply. This flexible airdrop mechanism has also led to a large-scale purchase of Pudgy Penguins series NFTs, which has also injected strong upward momentum into its price.
NFT Price Floor data shows that from the announcement of the token issuance plan on December 6 to the official launch, the floor price of Pudgy Penguins rose by as much as 133.6%, while the increase of Lil Pudgys reached 165.7%. At the same time, the sales volume of the Fat Penguin series also rose sharply. CryptoSlam statistics show that during this period, the sales volume of Pudgy Penguins exceeded US$54 million, and that of Lil Pudgys reached US$22.6 million.
On the other hand, Pudgy Penguins hopes to expand the community through airdrops. PENGU's token economic model shows that in addition to 25.9% of the total tokens allocated to the Pudgy community, other communities will also receive 24.12% of the tokens. According to Pudgy Penguins, the Solana ecosystem can receive about 25% of the PENGU token supply airdrops, which means that active users of applications such as Phantom Wallet and Jupiter can also receive airdrops without holding NFTs. The number of wallet addresses in this part is about 7 million, covering multiple protocol users and community members.
In addition, in order to expand the scale of the ecosystem, Pudgy Penguins' tokens also adopt a multi-chain deployment strategy. In addition to being deployed on Solana, they will also be launched on Ethereum and the anticipated L2 network Abstract Chain. Pudgy Penguins' parent company Igloo said that this move aims to build the largest on-chain community and expand the audience of the Pudgy Penguins ecosystem through multi-chain deployment.
Airdrops trigger a wave of speculation on physical toys, and the theft of QR codes causes dissatisfaction
Although the Pudgy Penguins airdrop event has motivated community members and promoted the development of the ecosystem, it has also triggered speculation. As Pudgy Penguins' IP derivative toys, Pudgy Toys, were included in the airdrop, this toy quickly attracted the attention of a large number of speculators and became their target.
"I just hired a bunch of kids to help me shop at Walmart, and they can't wait for my airdrop.", "I got a free 10x airdrop from the fat penguin toys that no one wanted to buy at Walmart. I spent $1,000 on this experiment and might buy more. I will donate these toys to children at Christmas. No matter what the result is, it's a win-win.", "I ordered 10,000 penguin toys from Amazon for $20. If each toy is airdropped for $100 and the toys are returned, I can make a profit of $1 million without any cost."
Pudgy Toys are snapped up
On social platforms, speculators have been sharing their "results" of buying up fat penguin toys. They are trying to make a profit by hoarding Pudgy Toys on a large scale. Compared with the risk of losing money by buying high-premium NFTs to bet on airdrops, buying physical toys can earn considerable returns without any effort.
Driven by profit, many speculators have made profits by hyping the QR code (which allows access to Pudgy World) inside fat penguin toys, and even resorted to stealing. This behavior, which deviates from the original cultural and emotional value of Pudgy Penguins, has also caused controversy and criticism.
"$PENGU is about to be released, and the toys are almost sold out across North America. Is anyone willing to buy these QR codes?" One user sold the QR codes of fat penguin toys at a high price. Another user said that some boxes of penguin toys ordered from Walmart were missing QR codes or no toys.
Pudgy Toys QR code is destroyed
According to a post by Mask founder Suji, "Today, a Web2.5 user in a New York store wanted to buy some Pudgy Penguin toys, but found that many packaging boxes had been opened and the attached QR codes had been stolen. These toys were originally prepared for those who really like Pudgy Penguins. Even though many people accidentally lost the QR codes, they still enjoyed the fun. However, with the launch of the airdrop, Degens flocked to the store and behaved irresponsibly. This behavior is theft, and the entire crypto community should condemn these behaviors. Please leave the Fat Penguin toys to those who really love them."
In general, the airdrop activity of Pudgy Penguins has brought significant ecological expansion and market popularity to the project. However, how to maintain a balance between cultural spirit and community values while promoting economic incentives has become an important topic that Pudgy Penguins and other crypto projects need to think deeply about and pay attention to in the long-term construction.
