Pudgy Penguins’ PENGU Token Drops 50% After Dec. 17 Airdrop

Pudgy Penguins’ native token, PENGU, is down more than 50% in the first hours of trading after the non-fungible token (NFT) project’s much-anticipated Dec. 17 airdrop.

Non-fungible token (NFT) project Pudgy Penguins has seen its native token, PENGU, drop by more than 50% in the first hours of trading following the much-anticipated airdrop on Dec. 17.

The project has distributed roughly half of PENGU’s total supply of nearly 89 billion tokens to community members, with about 26% allocated to NFT holders, according to Pudgy Penguins’ website.

Initially debuting at a market capitalization of around $2.8 billion, the PENGU token, which trades on Solana, has since slipped to a market cap of less than $2 billion, according to data from CoinGecko.

The Pudgy Penguins team has not announced a specific use case for PENGU tokens, though they are expected to play a part in the project's governance, according to Bybit.

Launched in 2021, Pudgy Penguins is a collection of 8,888 NFTs, each featuring a unique image of the brand's signature penguins.

The project has since launched other NFTs, including Lil’ Pudgys — a collection of 22,000 baby penguins — and Pudgy Rods, which feature penguin-themed fishing rods.

Holders of any of these NFTs were able to claim PENGU by proving ownership on the Ethereum network, according to the Pudgy Penguins team.

According to NFT marketplace OpenSea, the floor price for a Pudgy Penguin NFT on Dec. 17 was over 16 Ether (ETH) ($3,947.23) , or roughly $64,000. The NFTs are spread across nearly 5,000 unique wallets.

The NFTs were trading at a floor price of around 36 ETH just before PENGU's debut, according to OpenSea.

Meanwhile, Lil’ Pudgys and Pudgy Rods currently have floor prices of about 1.7 ETH and 0.7 ETH, respectively, on OpenSea.

Pudgy Penguins has also sold 1.5 million Pudgy-branded toys in retail stores like Walmart, according to Pudgy Penguins’ website.

Pudgy Penguins is the second-most expensive NFT after CryptoPunks. Among the earliest NFT collections, CryptoPunks — a set of 10,000 NFTs launched in 2017 — have sold for upwards of $20 million per NFT.

Several CryptoPunks NFTs are listed for around $170,000 on Dec. 17, according to CryptoPunks’ website.