Author: Nancy, PANews

A group of cute penguins are quietly changing the cultural narrative of the crypto world. Last weekend, several well-known crypto projects changed their X avatars to fat penguins. This seems to be an interesting social interaction, but it is a collective recognition of Pudgy Penguins' long-term spirit and brand building strategy. And this fat penguin is also pushing crypto grassroots experiments to accelerate towards mainstream culture.

The fat penguin once again dominated the encrypted Moments. What’s the secret to the “rebirth” of the small picture?

Recently, Pudgy Penguins has set off a wave of avatars in the mainstream crypto community. Industry heavyweights including Coinbase, OpenSea, VanEck, MoonPay, OKX and Jupiter have successively replaced the official avatars of their X platforms with Pudgy Penguins' secondary images.

In fact, this is not the first time that Pudgy Penguins has experienced a collective "head-changing" trend. As early as the end of December 2024, after Pudgy Penguins completed a large-scale airdrop to the community, OpenSea, Solana co-founder Toly, Binance.US and others took the lead in changing their avatars to fat penguins.

Then on April 26, 2025, on the occasion of World Penguin Day, Pudgy Penguins officially released a commemorative poster, and many well-known institutions responded simultaneously, including VanEck, Uniswap Labs, Phantom, Moonshot, Gemini and Helius, which successively released avatars related to fat penguins.

The reason why crypto projects have changed their avatars is not due to the influence of Pudgy Penguins' founder, nor is it simply because of the cute and pleasing visual style of fat penguins, but rather the support and recognition of the constructive narrative and long-termism culture behind it, as well as the rise of crypto elite entrepreneurship. Many founders in the crypto field are holders of Fat Penguin NFTs.

You know, during the hottest period of the NFT market, changing the avatar to a blue-chip NFT became a social ritual for crypto players to flaunt their identity, show their taste, and define their circles. For example, BAYC is the most typical example. It is not only an asset, but also a conspicuous social capital. Its popularity is more due to the pursuit of scarce assets by speculative capital. However, as the NFT market sentiment cools and speculative capital recedes, the blue-chip avatars that once filled the screen have been quietly removed, and NFT has even been labeled as a negative investment failure.

Compared to most of the small pictures that "you can get it if you have money" that eventually went downhill, the key to the success of the commercial transformation of Pudgy Penguins lies in its clear strategic planning, strong operational capabilities and narrative construction. Since the bear market of NFT in 2022, Pudgy Penguins has not been swallowed up by market sentiment. Instead, relying on its unique cute penguin image, it has actively carried out IP licensing and commercial landing, telling the outside world a vivid story about brand building, cultural operation and long-termism.

Behind all this is Luca Netz, a core operator with foresight and abundant resources. His brand management and operation methods are more in line with the aesthetics of the traditional market, which is largely different from the in-circle thinking of many NFT project founders.

From Pudgy Penguins' collaboration with Walmart, Amazon, Target and Walgreens to launch or sell physical toy series, and surpassing traditional strong IPs such as Disney and Transformers in sales, to teaming up with top Hollywood agency WME and children's book publisher Random House Kids to continuously expand derivative content, and then to developing products such as Pudgy Party and Pengu Clash, Pudgy Penguins has created a long-term brand building cycle through highly recognizable aesthetic language, combined with offline toys, e-commerce, social content, IP licensing and other methods, and actively penetrated into mainstream culture.

Not only that, they even created viral communication through mainstream platforms such as TikTok and Instagram, as well as landing at Sotheby's auctions, exhibiting in New York's Times Square and real-life events, which greatly increased brand exposure and public awareness. Such multi-dimensional marketing and communication strategies have helped Pudgy Penguins continue to expand its global influence, and the size of its active audience has also rapidly grown to millions. According to Pudgy Penguins CEO Luca Netz, as of July 2025, the number of global viewers of Fat Penguins has reached 87.4 million, and it is expected to approach or exceed the target of 100 million days by the end of the year, showing significant growth potential.

It is the Web2-style elite corporate operation style of Pudgy Penguins that breaks the outside world's stereotype of NFT and even the entire crypto market as speculative, showing the traditional world the true value and extension capabilities of Web3 brands, and making more and more traditional institutions willing to "pay" for fat penguins. Of course, for investors, Pudgy Penguins' narrative path not only brings investment thresholds in terms of price, but also tests the perception of trends, insight into business models, and judgment of ecological development.

More than just ringing the bell, VanEck and ETFs open the door to mainstream finance

Pudgy Penguins' brand imagination does not stop at IP narrative creation. Imagine that a penguin that was originally active only in the crypto community and known for its cute image actually appeared on the stage of the traditional financial market. This scene actually happened to Pudgy Penguins. The driving force behind this cross-border breakthrough is the old investment management company VanEck.

As early as June 2024, VanEck unexpectedly changed its social media profile picture to Pudgy Penguins, and publicly stated that "the boss thinks it's too cute, and I have to change it to PFP." This is not only a light-hearted and humorous cultural interaction, but also a sign that traditional financial giants are actively embracing native crypto-native IP.

Afterwards, VanEck not only used the fat penguin image in its Ethereum ETF promotional video that will be released in 2024, but also teamed up with Pudgy Penguins to go on the Nasdaq and rang the opening bell together when launching the DAPP ETF product not long ago. This was the first time that the native IP of Web3 landed on the stage of the global capital market, bringing unprecedented brand exposure to Pudgy Penguins, and also symbolizing that it has officially obtained identity certification in the financial industry.

The reason why VanEck supports Pudgy Penguins seems to be a brand strategy of leveraging the momentum. In the promotion of the Nasdaq bell ringing ceremony, VanEck introduced the event in a relatively neutral and objective tone on its official website, LinkedIn, TikTok and other platforms for traditional investors and mainstream media, emphasizing its crypto layout. However, on the X platform where the crypto community is active, VanEck did not clearly highlight the specific content of the bell ringing and other ecological projects. Pudgy Penguins' own publicity team released relevant news on the X platform with great fanfare, attracting extensive discussion in the crypto community.

Regarding this wave of fat penguin avatars, Matt Bartlett, director of VanEck Web3, further explained that people care about culture, not history. CryptoPunks have an unquestionable historical status, but they are born with a "lonely" temperament, making it difficult to achieve content co-construction or collaborative communication with brands. Although BAYC once occupied a cultural high ground, it has always been a certain distance, more like a collection to be flaunted, rather than a cultural symbol that can truly represent the identity of the user. Pudgy Penguins are different. They are cute, friendly, and have MEME potential, which makes them naturally suitable for dissemination. They are friendly enough for brands, children, and a wider mainstream audience, while maintaining the original spiritual core of Web3. They do not exist for "coolness", but strive to be "lovable". This culture can be shared, imitated, and participated in. It is spread through emojis, toys, language, and stories to stimulate public participation. For this reason, more and more companies are willing to create content around Pudgy, recognize its value, and actively join this cultural narrative. Matt Bartlett believes that historical value alone is not enough to maintain current influence. What really drives the continuous evolution of brands and communities is the appeal and resonance of culture. Now Pudgy Penguins is defining a new cultural atmosphere.

What is even more groundbreaking is that the path for Pudgy Penguins to advance into a financial product is opening up. According to public information, Cboe BZX Exchange has submitted a 19b-4 application document to the US SEC for the Canary PENGU ETF and opened a public comment period of about 21 days. The ETF product will directly hold Pudgy Penguins ecological assets (including PENGU tokens/NFTs). If it passes the review smoothly in the future, PENGU will become the first US ETF product to directly hold MEME or NFTs, and gradually become a core configuration target of mainstream investment portfolios.

Currently, the market sentiment of Pudgy Penguins has been driven, and its ecology has also risen accordingly. Among them, the floor price of Pudgy Penguins NFT reached 14.19 ETH, a record high in nearly six months; the price of the token PENGU reached 0.03 US dollars, and the increase in the past 30 days reached 192.7%, which is not far from the historical high.

In general, from a small avatar picture to a cultural consumer brand, and then to a financial asset target, Pudgy Penguins' counterattack story has not only established itself as a visual asset that can be commercialized, socialized, and even financialized, but has also opened up a phased victory for the crypto elite culture.