Pudgy’s Luca Netz explains why NFTs aren’t what they used to be (in a good way)
It might be early, and it might be hard to believe, but excitement around NFTs is starting to return.
Just don’t make the mistake of thinking this time around will look anything like last time, says Pudgy Penguins CEO Luca Netz.
“The floodgates are open, and you’re going to really see the best of what crypto entrepreneurs are going to bring within these next couple of years,” Netz recently told Coinage, highlighting a new creative shift happening in crypto now that the industry is no longer as on high alert as it was under the reign of former SEC Chair Gary Gensler. “I think it is game-on for the next two to three years, and I think you’re going to see the best that crypto has to offer here shortly.”
For Pudgy Penguins, one of the leading NFT projects, Netz says the goal has been to establish their lovable penguins as the new characters of the internet and to potentially rival Disney’s Mickey Mouse. To do so, the project has leaned heavily on measuring and promoting its virality, including tracking how many people use their GIFs, how often people view thier YouTube shorts, and eventually looking for ways to unlock that attention.
“I think at the end of the day, an NFT project’s goal is to proliferate the IP, right? Like, if your mission as an NFT project is to not proliferate the IP, I would argue that you shouldn’t be an NFT project,” Netz explained.
And if there was one thing Pudgy Penguins did extremely well last cycle, it was selling people on the idea of getting the brand out there and monetizing the attention better than others. Their plush toys made it into Walmart, and then the project rolled out their PENGU token on Solana, unleashing a wave of other NFT projects attempting the same thing, each doing so to less and less fanfare. Pudgy’s token slipped from around $0.03 in its December debut to a low of $0.003 this April. But since then, the token has rallied more than 500%.
Some of that is tied to new entrants to the ecosystem, and some of it seems to be the project doubling down on buying its own token and committing to disinflationary elements that began with burning $150 million in unclaimed tokens after the launch. The trend set the playbook that plenty of other memecoin projects, including Coinage’s own PLYBTN memecoin, soon followed with.
“We’re doing more buys and burns,” Netz said. “We’re projected to do $40 to $50 million in revenue this year. I want to take a huge portion of that and buy our token, and if we can just keep doing that over the course of years, it’s not if Pudgy Penguins and PENGU will be bigger than Doge and some of the incumbents, it’s when.”
Actions like that may have attracted the attention of the SEC under the prior administration, but now Netz says that like Coinage, he’s also educating policy makers in Washington about the positives community ownership and NFTs may be able to unlock for holders. During the summer, Netz estimated he’d been in and out of Washington D.C. six times to discuss updates with decision makers in government. That eventually culminated in a Canary Capital ETF filing to establish a fund that would hold Pudgy Penguins NFTs and PENGU tokens — the first of its kind.
But as much as the NFT game has evolved, Netz credits the success of Pudgy Penguins to its simplicity. As much as other projects might want to over complicate things, he’s tried to keep things simple: Build a loveable brand, and get people to want to share it.
“The beauty about Pudgy Penguins and PENGU is how easily digestible it is to the regular person,” he said.
As momentum around Ethereum and Solana continue to mount, Pudgy Penguins straddling both ecosystems with an NFT and memecoin sets them up well no matter who leads who in the cycle. As the project leads NFTs again in the recent uptick, Netz sees a strong 2025 ahead.
“I think we will go further than we’ve been in the past in terms of our NFT ecosystem,” he said, declining to share partnership specifics at this time. “I’m going to keep that one close to the chest. But if you thought Walmart was big, I think I got something bigger.”
