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

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 NFT market experienced a surge during the "NFT Summer" of 2021, reaching its peak in early 2022. However, activity has declined significantly since then.

Recently, NFT popularity has rebounded with the token issuance of @pudgypenguins and @Azuki.

Here's a closer look at the recent NFT token trend.

Key Takeaways

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.

Pudgy Penguins

Pudgy Penguins has two related tokens: $PENGU (community/meme token) and @Abstract_Eco (L2). In December 2024, $PENGU was launched on Solana, with more than 50% of the tokens being distributed to the community via airdrops. Influenced by the airdrop expectations, the floor price of Pudgy NFT once reached a record high of 35 ETH. As of now, according to @Dune data, $PENGU has 615,000 on-chain holders.

AbstractChain is a consumer-oriented zk-rollup L2, formerly known as Frame, that was acquired by @IglooInc. Although 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.

Azuki

This month, @Azuki launched the @animecoin token, which drove up the NFT floor price by 2 ETH upon announcement. $ANIME is linked to AnimeChain, an anime-focused L3 chain (built on Arbitrum Orbit). Similar to $PENGU, over 50% of $ANIME's tokens were allocated to the community at launch. In addition to the company and team/advisor portions, the remaining tokens were fully unlocked at launch.

Memeland

A Web3 game studio, @Memeland has launched multiple games and NFT series. In April 2023, Memeland launched the $MEME token, which was airdropped across all of Memeland's NFT series, including MVP, Captainz, and Potatoz.

A year later, Memeland launched Memenet, an L2 network built on Ethereum.

BAYC

The Web3 company @yugalabs is behind the NFT series @BoredApeYC and MAYC. In May 2022, they launched @apecoin, the first blue-chip NFT token to hit the market. $APE is the governance and utility token used within the APE ecosystem.

They also launched ApeChain, an @arbitrum Orbit L3 network in September 2024, which is similar to @Azuki's AnimeChain. In line with $APE's strategy, ApeChain is a new chain that was launched a few months after the token.