MR PRO | Pudgy Penguins: From 0 to Hero

GM DOers! 😎

There have been many remarkable comeback stories throughout history.

Steve Jobs was kicked out of Apple 🍎 in 1985 but made a triumphant return in 1997 when Apple acquired his company, NeXT.

After briefly retiring from basketball 🏀, Michael Jordan returned to the NBA in 1995 and led the Chicago Bulls 🐂 to three more championships.

Before achieving enormous success with the "Harry Potter" series, J.K. Rowling faced financial difficulties and rejections from multiple publishers. 📚 

The great comeback story of web3 and maybe even this decade has got to be Pudgy Penguins. 🐧

This is a story of a $8M rug pull that no one talks about anymore.

This is a story of a community voting out its leader.

This is the story of a new leader who has become one of the most respected leaders in web3.

This is a story of building a billion dollar global IP brand. 💰

This is a story told onchain. ⛓️

This is, above all, the epic story of Pudgy Penguins. 🐧💫

But before we dive into the story, we need your help! 🙏

As we migrated over to Paragraph, our newsletters may get lost in your spam & promotions inbox. To avoid that from happening, and to ensure that you get the BEST content in web3, reply to this email with a GM.

Everyone who replies will be rewarded with a juicy discount to our upcoming Investing Course. 💸 Now back to Pudgys! 👇

Let’s start this journey with 5 onchain numbers:

June 22, 2021 – Floor price of 0.03 ETH 

Pudgy mint sells out, led by a team of 4 founders. ✅

Aug 29, 2021 – Floor price of 3.8 ETH 

Floor price on Aug 29, 2021. Pudgy floor hits an ATH the day before the “Pudgy Presents” airdrop. 🚀

Jan 6, 2022 – Floor price of 0.5 ETH 

Pudgy floor plummets to 0.5 ETH after it is revealed that founders have emptied over $8M from the treasury and the community votes to kick them out. 😨

Jan 4, 2023 – Floor price of 6.5 ETH 

6 months after being taken over by Luca Netz, Pudgy sets a new ATH. 📈

Aug 3, 2023 – Floor price of 4.3 ETH 

In a bear market when most NFT projects have gone to 0 and every bluechip is down at least 80%, Pudgy is only down 30%.

But what happened? How did this project go from dead after getting rugged to being a rather successful project through the bear market? 🤷

Today we’re going to break down the Pudgy story in 4 chapters:

Chapter 1: Four Founders, Three Collections and $145M in Secondary Sales

Chapter 2: The Most Diabolical $8M Rug Pull

Chapter 3: The $2.5M Saviour

Chapter 4: How to Build a Billion Dollar IP Brand

Buckle up my PRO frens and let’s go. 👇

Chapter 1: Four Founders, Three Collections and $145M in Secondary Sales

First let's just make sure everyone is on the same page. If you’re a Pudgy fan you already know this.

There are 3 collections within the Pudgy ecosystem.

Pudgy Penguins launched in July 2021 amid a period of mania in the NFT space. The collection consists of 8,888 avatars of cartoon penguins living on the Ethereum blockchain.

The NFTs were available to mint for 0.03 ETH and quickly sold out. Not much happened in the first month. The floor price fluctuated but never really took off. 

Until August 5, 2021, you could’ve bought a Pudgy for 0.08ETH. 8 days later on, Aug 13 the floor hit 3.5 ETH. 

That’s a 43x! The days of NFT summer were crazy! 🤯

The collection soared in popularity as key players in the NFT space endorsed the project on social media. Whales started to buy in. 

High-profile celebrities such as rapper Tory Lanez and NBA star Steph Curry joined as well. 

By August 2021, The New York Times had run a feature on the collection.

On August 30th, 2021 Pudgy Rods, AKA “rogs”, (previously “Pudgy Presents”) were released as a free-to-claim NFT, one for each Pudgy Penguin. 

They were released as eggs wrapped in red ribbons, and their contents were kept as a surprise. 🎁

During the time between the release and the reveal on Christmas, people were speculating about the possible outcomes of the eggs. 

After months of anticipation, on Christmas Eve, the presents were revealed. People generally didn't know what to expect, but were extremely underwhelmed with the unveiling of the fishing rods.

The aesthetics were pretty bland, and to add salt to injury, they were misspelled as "Rogs."

The Rods reveal was not well received by the community or by Crypto Twitter in general. 

It was widely considered a flop, and it strengthened people's already existing FUD cases against Pudgy Penguins and its founding members.

That Christmas eve signified a turning point in the Pudgy Penguins history. 👀

Chapter 2: The Most Diabolical $8M Rug Pull

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