Pudgy Penguins

Pudgy Penguins is a Web3 intellectual property (IP) company and a non-fungible token (NFT) collection. The company was founded in July 2021 by a group of college students: Cole Villemain (also known as Cole Thereum), Clayton Patterson, and two other people known simply as Mickyj and Jonah. Pudgy Penguins was acquired by Luca Schnetzler (also known as Luca Netz) in April 2022 for 750 Ethereum (worth $2.5 million at the time). Netz serves as the CEO.

Upon its founding in 2021, the Pudgy Penguins cofounders had stated goals for the company, such as minting a unique coin, writing a children's book, and creating a virtual world game for the platform. In January 2022, cofounders Cole Villemain and Clayton Patterson (also known as Twitter user @tubbyfat) were ousted from the company after a vote on Discord following allegations that they failed to complete their stated goals and drained the company's treasury. The vote commenced after Twitter user @9x9x9eth publicly posted that the cofounders "promised a game, a token, an educational book on NFTs, and more" the previous year, and that "after a half year, they still have not yet set up the team, they are still in the stage of hiring." @9x9x9eth also tweeted that the cofounders were looking to abandon Pudgy Penguins and had presented a deal to him for 888 Ethereum, which he turned down. After posting said tweets, the price of Pudgy Penguin NFTs increased almost threefold, and the company began receiving buyout offers from prominent figures in the NFT market. In April 2022, Pudgy Penguins was purchased by Luca Netz for 750 Ethereum, equivalent to $2.5 million.

The Pudgy Penguins NFT collection of 8,888 penguins was released in July 2021. The NFTs, which were available to mint for 0.03 Ethereum, sold out less than twenty minutes after their release. After the various allegations about the company's cofounders were posted on Twitter in January 2022, multiple Pudgy Penguin NFT holders created Wrapped Penguins on Metadrop. This allowed other existing NFT holders in the community to wrap their Penguins into a new collection that didn't pay royalties to the Pudgy Penguins team.

A Pudgy Toy.

In May 2023, Pudgy Penguins released its line of penguin plushy toys, called Pudgy Toys, produced in partnership with the toy company PMI. The collection consists of sixteen different plushies inspired by Pudgy Penguin's original collection of NFTs. Each plushy corresponds with an existing NFT on the blockchain, and each one is equipped with a QR code that unlocks a series of NFTs. Nearly $500,000 in sales were made in the forty-eight hours following their release. The online portal, Pudgy World, was launched along with Pudgy Toys. Pudgy World provides non-Web3 native consumers with a blockchain wallet, as well as soulbound and tradeable NFTs.