Fat Penguin issues coins, ME will be launched, is NFT booming again?

Author: TechFlow

The NFT track, which has been absent from the bull market feast for a long time, has recently become restless. First, Magic Eden opened airdrop share inquiries yesterday, and today the ETH ecosystem’s top NFT “Fat Penguin” Pudgy Penguins also tweeted to announce its coin issuance plan this year.

Although the specific date and distribution details have not been announced yet, the approximate token distribution ratio has been released. The largest share (25.9%) of the overall distribution is given to the Pudgy community; at the same time, 24.12% is distributed to other communities, and even 0.35% is reserved for $FTT Holders.

According to the analysis of community user @BTCThinker88, the scale of $PENGU token airdrop is still considerable, and Pudgy Penguins holders are expected to receive $31,000-61,000 (7.9 ETH-15.8 ETH) each. If Abstract Chain also provides token distribution for the Penguin community, this may become one of the largest airdrop events in 2024 after HYPE.

Sure enough, the biggest benefit for a project is the benefit that can stimulate prices. As soon as the coin issuance news came out, the floor prices of the fat penguin series NFT Pudgy Penguins and Lil Pudgys rose: Pudgy Penguins floor price is now 18.55 $ETH (about 72,600 US dollars), Lil Pudgys floor price is now 1.91 $ETH (about 7,500 US dollars), with a daily increase of nearly 20%, and the transaction volume increased by 3-5 times.

NFT is picking up steam, can projects only succeed if they grasp the trend?

As the market continues to rise, the overflow of funds has also come to the NFT ecosystem. According to statistics from Dune user @hildobby, the total sales of NFTs have begun to pick up, with daily transactions reaching nearly 40 million US dollars and weekly transactions exceeding 100 million US dollars.

Blue-chip NFTs also saw encouraging growth. According to OKX data, the floor price and transaction volume of blue-chip NFTs on the ETH mainnet both saw significant growth within 30 days.

Some projects have stopped operating, while others continue to receive airdrops.

In the bear market of the past two years, compared with altcoins, the NFT track can be said to be even more bearish. In 2021, the blue-chip NFTs Boring Ape and Azuki, which were extremely popular, encountered a series of major changes in the bear market, such as community Fud and large-scale selling, and the price once fell to the freezing point. The market has gradually disenchanted NFTs. The use cases of NFTs are more as “expected exchange vouchers” for future airdrops of a certain project or simply commemorative certificates. Most NFTs have lost their utility as investment/speculative assets. Even some large projects are no exception. On December 3, RTFKT, an NFT brand that was once popular and even acquired by Nike, announced that it would gradually cease operations when the crypto bull market arrived, which was regrettable.

Apart from a few sporadic new projects, only a few blue-chip projects remain relatively hot, and the polarization between NFT projects is becoming more and more serious: some blue-chip NFTs still perform well even in a bear market: Milady, Pudgy Penguins, Madlads and other strong community projects have received large airdrops from various popular projects such as Ethena ($ENA), Aethir ($ATH), Zksync ($ZK), Wormhole ($W) this year alone, and the total value of the airdrops basically far exceeds the project floor price.

Being close to the market is obviously the way to go

Judging from the existing distribution plan, the Pudgy Penguins community obviously understands the market very well, and the old head NFT is really good at attracting customers. Not only does the community share account for the majority of the distribution, but the distribution to other communities is also generous. This distribution plan accounts for half of the total tokens.

In addition to allocating large amounts to the community, Pudgy Penguins, which was born on the ETH mainnet, also deliberately chose to issue tokens on Solana, which is currently the most popular. Indeed, whether in terms of liquidity or player sentiment, Pudgy Penguins, as a cartoon NFT project, chose Solana, which is full of Meme fanatics, which is undoubtedly a better choice for the price launch of the project.

What happened to the other old NFTs?

Bored Ape Yacht Club

Current floor price: 20.7888 ETH

Historical highest average transaction price: 340 ETH

90-day average price: 14.21 ETH

90-day trading volume: 20409 ETH

As one of the most popular NFTs, BAYC has been criticized for not keeping up with the times in the bear market. Indeed, since the sky-high transactions and the issuance of coins and new products in 2021 and 2022, the Bored Ape series has not made any further substantial innovations. In October this year, Apechain announced that it would start its own Meme Pump, and BAYC’s short-term trading volume also increased accordingly, but as the heat dissipated, it fell again. Until the recent collective recovery of the sector, trading performance has gradually recovered.

Milady Maker

Current floor price: 6.53 ETH

Historical highest average transaction price: 7.11 ETH

90-day average price: 4.63 ETH

90-day trading volume: 10756 ETH

Milady, which is relatively low-key but has a strong community, has maintained an upward trend recently. The average floor price has exceeded the time when Musk issued the Milady-themed emoticon package in May last year. And because the price of ETH is close to US$4,000, if settled in US dollars, the price of Milady has more than doubled from the previous high point.

Azuki

Current floor price: 6.1 ETH

Historical highest average transaction price: 40.77 ETH

90-day average price: 5.222 ETH

90-day trading volume: 8026 ETH

Azuki’s current floor price is 6.1 E, which is still some distance away from the average price of 16 E when the community fud+ plummeted in June 2024. Obviously, the current price cannot be regarded as a “recovery”, but rather it is rising along with the overall market recovery.

Mad Lads – Solana

Current floor price: 43.5 SOL

Historical highest average transaction price: 173.58 SOL

90-day average price: 45.47 SOL

90-day turnover: 59345 SOL

As a representative project of Solana, Mad Lads is also a welfare project that has benefited from airdrops from various projects. Projects such as Wormhole and Backpack have allocated a considerable portion of airdrops to the Mad Lads community. Perhaps affected by the overall downturn in the Solana ecosystem NFT, the price of Mad Lads has been falling since its high point in March. Recently, the market has improved and the price has rebounded.

summary

Pudgy Penguins chose to announce the issuance of coins on the Solana chain with the best liquidity when ETH broke through a new high and market sentiment was positive. From a strategic perspective, Pudgy Penguins’ coin issuance plan was successful. Judging from the price reaction, the market has obviously paid for this action.

From the price trend of $APE in recent years, it can be seen that issuing coins is not a panacea for NFT projects. In order to avoid the issuance of coins becoming the last dance for the project party to realize its value, it is necessary to look at the specific “operations” of the subsequent project party in terms of price and token use cases. However, one thing is certain: not only NFT projects, but also all old projects that want to revive, grasping the trend and staying close to the market are the main themes that should be followed in this bull market. For market participants, no matter how exaggerated the project is, keeping observation and making calm and fully grasped investment decisions are the most important ways to survive in the bull market.