Pudgy Penguins Ethereum NFT Gains 400 ETH Despite Bear Trend

A change in leadership has helped the Pudgy Penguins collection make one of the most remarkable comebacks in NFT history.

Pudgy Penguins Mark $650,000 NFT Sale

Pudgy Penguins rally despite a grueling months-long NFT bear market.

The rarest piece in the NFT room’s iconic flightless bird collection, the Pudgy Penguin #6873, sold for 400 ETH worth just under $650,000 on Monday. The sale of the rare penguin token – the only one in the collection of 8,888 objects that faces a different direction – marks the highest price a piece has achieved in the project’s history.

Launched in June 2021, Pudgy Penguins quickly became one of the most sought-after NFTs in the “PFP” – a niche popularized by CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club and circulated via social media profile pictures – category. However, the project’s trajectory took a turn for the worse after notorious crypto speculator ZachXBT outed one of its founders and leading members, Cole Villemain, for running paid promotions of NFT projects without disclosing that he had received any remuneration. Villemain come clean about his antics, but he and the founding team were later accused of siphoning funds from the project’s treasury. The Pudgy Penguins community discussed splitting the project, until the e-commerce entrepreneur and investor bought the project for 750 ETH worth $2.5 million in April.

Months after fading into obscurity and trading below the 2 ETH range, Pudgy Penguins is making a comeback. Since its acquisition in April, Pudgy Penguins has launched its own NFT marketplace, clothing and toy lines, a media center and increased social media presence. The collection’s floor price rose by around 400% after the acquisition before giving back some of the gains over the following months.

Despite the grueling NFT bear market – which has seen daily trading volume falling from a record high of $600 million in May to an average of around $25 million over the past three months, Pudgy Penguin’s NFTs have crossed all-time highs in ETH terms. The last week has the collection’s floor price rose with approx. 69%, increasing from 2.2 ETH to 3.8 ETH. Most other sought-after PFP NFT collections have seen floor prices plummet in recent months.

The most important move driving this week’s wave came on Sunday when the project introduced a nine-member advisory board, which counts Web2 and Web3 heavyweights like Nansen’s Alex Svanevik and Jordan Sterling, who work on Meta’s venture capital partnership team. “With diverse backgrounds in Web2 and Web3, our board will assist in our quest to innovate across multiple industries,” Pudgy Penguins wrote, triggering a floor price rally that culminated in the 400 ETH NFT sale on Monday.

“Today I was able to purchase the rarest penguin in a collection that helped me earn my first bit of life-changing money,” the buyer of the left-facing penguin, who goes by FUDrick Douglas, so today on Twitter.

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this article owned ETH and several other cryptocurrencies.