The Recent NFT Token Trend: A Deep Dive into Pudgy Penguins, Azuki, BAYC, and Memeland

The NFT space enjoyed a boom during the “NFT Summer” of 2021 and peaked in early 2022. However, activity has declined significantly since then.

The popularity of NFTs (non-fungible tokens) skyrocketed during the "NFT Summer" of 2021, reaching its peak in early 2022. However, since then, activity in the NFT space has declined substantially.

But recently, with the token issuance of @pudgypenguins and @Azuki, the floor price of NFT has risen again, and the trend of NFT tokens has attracted attention once more.

To better understand the current NFT ecosystem, we will conduct an in-depth analysis of the following projects and their token strategies: Pudgy Penguins, Azuki, BoredApeYC, and Memeland.

1. Pudgy Penguins

Pudgy Penguins has two related tokens: $PENGU (community/meme token) and @Abstract_Eco (L2).

$PENGU was launched on Solana in December 2024, with over 50% of the tokens being distributed to the community through airdrops. Expectations of the airdrop drove the floor price of Pudgy NFT to a record high of 35 ETH. According to @Dune data, $PENGU currently has 615,000 on-chain holders.

AbstractChain is a consumer-oriented zk-rollup L2, formerly Frame, which was acquired by @IglooInc. While the relevant tokens have not yet been issued, both the Abstract and Pudgy communities are eagerly awaiting the launch of the Abstract mainnet in the first quarter of 2025.

2. Azuki

This month, @Azuki launched the @animecoin token, which resulted in a 2 ETH increase in the NFT floor price. The AnimeChain L3 chain (built on Arbitrum Orbit) is linked to $ANIME.

Similar to $PENGU, $ANIME plans to allocate over 50% of tokens to the community. The remaining tokens will be fully unlocked at launch, except for the company and team/advisor portions.

3. Memeland

Multiple games and NFT series have been produced by the Web3-focused game studio @Memeland. Memeland launched the $MEME token in April 2023, which was airdropped across all of Memeland's NFT series, including MVP, Captainz, and Potatoz.

Later, Memeland introduced Memenet, an L2 network built on Ethereum, in April 2024.

4. BAYC

The NFT series @BoredApeYC and MAYC are both owned by @yugalabs. They launched @apecoin in May 2022, making it the first blue-chip NFT token. The governance and utility token for the APE ecosystem is called $APE.

They also introduced ApeChain in September 2024, an @arbitrum Orbit L3 network like @Azuki's AnimeChain. ApeChain is a new chain that was released a few months after the token launch, following $APE's strategy.