The Pudgy Penguin NFT collection harbors a unique allure that celebrates the rich history behind digital collectibles. Born from the creativity of four college friends during the boom of 2021 crypto-summer, this iconic collection arrived in impeccable fashion to captivate the PFP market. These flightless birds are not only uniquely joyful and welcoming, but their chubby and humorous appearance perfectly encapsulates the meme-culture rooted in Web 3. The Pudgy Penguin collection offers something unique to its holders: the opportunity to join a community dedicated to spreading positivity throughout the web3-space.

Following the launch, the collection catapulted in popularity, generating over 60,000 ETH in transaction volume within the first 12 months and witnessing individual sales as large as 400 ETH. Boasting renown celebrities such as Stephen Curry, Tory Lanez and Lil Baby as collectors, the Penguins forged their path into becoming a standard-bearer for digital collectibles.

In the first half of 2022, the penguins encountered The Great Blizzard. Struggling to realize a clear path forward, the founders soon transferred ownership to Luca Netz, an avid community member to lead the huddle. Following months of hard work under new leadership, the collection realized increased sales volume and higher prices, testament to the positive, inviting ethos of its strong community. A true story emblematic of enduring commitment.

Pudgy Penguins is a collection of 8,888 penguins waddling through the NFT space with nothing but positive vibes. The founders understand that the world we live in today is plagued by anxiety and depression, and the penguins are ready to leave a mark both in Web2 and Web3.

Pudgy Rods

Pudgy Rods (previously known as Pudgy Presents) were released as a free-to-claim NFT on August 30th, 2021, one for each Pudgy Penguin held. It's no longer possible to mint them; the only way to get one is from secondary markets including our Native Marketplace and OpenSea.

Lil Pudgys were introduced by the founders and previous team as a cute and affordable entry to the Pudgy world, a second-tier if you will. The collection released on December 19, 2021 with the following structure:

Claimable per Pudgy Penguin: 8,888
Public Mint Total: 13,334
Total Collection Size: 22,222

The public sale was structured as a Dutch auction; the minting price decreased over the span of two hours until it settled at 0.03 eth. It sold out shortly after those two hours.

The Lil Pudgy claim remains open indefinitely, so to date, any Penguin that hasn't claimed theirs can still do so. You can check on any Penguin's eligibility on our website, or on etherscan (9. canClaim). At the time of writing, 1,661 Pudgy Penguins have yet to claim their Lil Pudgys. Lil Pudgys are purchasable on secondary markets including our Native Marketplace and OpenSea.

A soulbound token is a non-transferable token that lives in a wallet.

We developed it based on the learnings found in Vitalik’s white paper and EIP4973. One thing we felt very strongly about was implementing the concept of a Soulbound Token while working within the constraints of current supported EIPs to ensure safety and accessibility for further developments we plan to work on. truePengu is an ERC1155 and has a modification that removes transferability.

On July 22, 2022, on the Pudgy Penguins one year anniversary, we rolled out and activated one of the first use cases for a Soulbound token in Web3, in a way that hasn’t been done or conceptualized before. Every Pudgy Penguin holder was airdropped a "truePengu" token based on a snapshot that was taken at 12AM EST, on July 22, 2022.
Learn more about the truePengu and Soulbound Tokens here.
Since then, we introduced Pengu Pins to commemorate licensing deals, and outstanding community members.

The team plans on using these tokens to empower community members by helping them create their own unique identities that stands out from others.

You can read the full terms of IP rights at: https://pudgypenguins.com/ip-rights

What can you do with your Pudgy?

Simply put, with the Pudgy Penguin you own, you can use it in your personal endeavors, which include using it as your PFP, showing it off, selling it, and merchandising it through the sales of physical merch.

The main takeaways about the limitations of using your Pudgy Penguins assets include:

• You can only use the Pudgy NFT that you own in your commercial efforts.
• If your commercial efforts exceed $500k or the equivalent in ETH in annual gross revenue, you need to contact us.
• If you're engaging in a licensing deal with a third party, (e.g., you're signing a licensing deal with Starbucks to sell penguin cupcakes), you need to contact us.
• You may not use the name "Pudgy Penguin" or any Pudgy Penguin logo or trademark.
• The use of Pudgy assets shall not be damaging or adversely impacting the Pudgy reputation.

What's the thought process behind the IP terms?

The reasonings behind the limitations mainly boil down to:

💎 Protecting the Pudgy Penguin brand and its IP.

The team is honing in on licensing initiatives and is aiming to grow the brand to its full potential. In order for these efforts to create deals with major brands to be successful, we need to ensure there are no conflicts between our future products and initiatives and the community's.

We are working hard to build a brand that is family-friendly, respectful, and inclusive of everyone. Therefore, we take care to ensure we are entering licensing deals with companies that align with our vision.

💎 Protecting the community from bad actors.

The web3 space is swarmed with bad actors whose main purpose is to get money out of your wallet. To mitigate and avoid confusion regarding unofficial derivatives and unsolicited websites, our stance is that we don't allow minting of Pudgy Penguins derivative collections.

💎 Ensuring all community initiatives lead to conversations with the team so we can ensure that your project complies with our agreement, and if it does, discuss how best we can support you.

We want to know about and consider promoting your Pudgy Penguin projects, where appropriate, regardless of whether those projects are for your own personal, non-commercial use, or whether they are commercial projects. If you are getting started on a project where you intend to make commercial use of your Pudgy Penguin NFT and related art, please let us know by describing your project here.

Nothing in the IP rights agreement in https://pudgypenguins.com/ip-rights shall be interpreted as granting any license of intellectual property rights to you other than as explicitly set forth in the agreement. For legal inquiries, please email us at legal@pudgypenguins.io

Licensing Deals & Brand Partnerships

The team had always recognized the potential Pudgy Penguins have in going viral and global. The IP of something is only as good as the utilization of it, so we have tapped into our own connections with major distributors, brands, and companies with the main purpose of offering more opportunities to our holders. In addition to reaching out to our own network, we formed a partnerships team to assist in the process of growing the Pudgy Penguins brand through collaborations and community involvement.
With that being said, we are one of the first NFT companies to offer major licensing opportunities to their holders.

As we continue to embark on this journey of creating the fastest growing Web3 brand in the world, utilization and mass adoption of Web3 IP is very important. With that in mind, we partnered with PMI Toys to incorporate these two aspects and push forward Web3 culture through the Pudgy Penguins brand. The partnership with PMI Toys will bring the Pudgy Penguins to life. In addition to that, we also offered licensing opportunities for the Pudgy Toys to our holders.

On September 20th, 2022, we announced an extension of the toy collection: An exclusive collectibles that feature Lil Pudgys, licensed directly from our community.

Learn more about our partnership with PMI here.

Green Kids Club

The Green Kids Club partnership we announced was the second IP licensing opportunity for our holders, which enabled us to expand our IP initiatives to new avenues, all through storytelling.

The Pudgy Penguins children's book is planned to come to a bookstore near you in Q1 of 2023, and the Pudgy characters featured in the book are directly from the community.

We use Fam's (https://gmfam.xyz/) decentralized community calendar to organize activities and stay up-to-date on past and upcoming events.
Holders of Pudgy Penguins, Lil Pudgys, and Pudgy Rods can create events on the calendar.

Our calendar link is: https://gmfam.xyz/fam/pudgy-penguins-project/calendar

We are actively structuring ideas for initiatives and listening to the community's input by hosting regular discussions, mainly on Discord and Twitter, These discussions help us shape our game-plan and ensure the team is aligned with the community.

The easiest way to get involved is by participating in the discussions in the Pudgy Penguins Discord.

You can buy a Pudgy Penguin and its sub-collections directly on our website, on our native marketplace.

Our marketplace aggregates listings from all popular marketplaces, such as OpenSea, and makes it easy to browse and switch between the sub-collections.

Pudgy Media is a hub that provides content for the community and by the community.
On the Pudgy Media Website you'll find the latest content, including:
• Blogs: This is where we post monthly recaps and important events.
• Pudgy GIFs: Where you can submit ideas for GIFs to be animated by our content creators.
• Pedia: Where you can learn about the community's lore and inside jokes.
• The Scrapbook: A place where we regularly post wholesome community posts.
• Videos: Where we keep our videos.
• Walkman: Where you can find the latest podcasts and talk shows, as well as our Spotify playlist.

Make sure to follow the Pudgy Media Twitter.

Building In Public Series:
Behind the scenes of whats its like building a company.

Meet the Pudgy Penguins team. A team of builders, thinkers, operators, and creators, all unified with the purpose of excelling Pudgy Penguins into the fastest growing Web3 brand in the world.  With the goal of building and innovating, the broader version of our team is the Huddle, our community. With our community that fosters numerous perspectives and ideas, we are all working towards building a mass-adoptable web3 brand. We also Want to shout out our amazing community team consisting of Berko (community manager), ActuallyAgents (community lead), Ppmcghee (Chief Meme Officer), and TheChild (community Safety Moderator).

Luca Netz: CEO https://twitter.com/LucaNetz
Lorenzo Melendez: CTO https://twitter.com/0xLoMel
Nicholas Ravid: CMO
Peter Lobanov: CCO https://twitter.com/chefgoyardi
Jennifer McGlon: CLO https://twitter.com/empathyandip
Dr. Kaizu: Head Of Operations https://twitter.com/drkaizu

Since its inception, Pudgy Penguins has been featured in numerous publications, including:
New York Times • CNBC • Bloomberg • Yahoo Finance • Forbes • Investing