According to Blockworks, the popularity of Bored Apes Yacht Club, a collection of 10,000 cartoon ape NFTs, has been declining in recent months, while Pudgy Penguins continues to gain traction. The floor prices of the two projects have converged, with Bored Apes at $57,469 and Pudgy Penguins at $51,730, as of Monday morning. Pudgy Penguins has seen over 2,000 sales in the past month, compared to 886 for Bored Apes, according to NFT Price Floor.
A year and a half ago, the Bored Apes floor price was roughly 100 times that of Pudgy Penguins. Pudgy Penguins CEO Luca Netz has been working to transform the project into a successful intellectual property brand, raising a $9 million seed round in May 2023. Pudgy Penguins has released toy versions of its NFTs, which started selling in Walmart stores in September 2023, and teased the open-world game Pudgy World, slated for a Q1 2024 release.
Meanwhile, Bored Ape Yacht Club, owned by Yuga Labs, faced a setback in its metaverse project Otherside. Users experienced high gas costs when minting NFTs on Ethereum, leading to community complaints. Yuga Labs initially offered a different free collectible to affected users but later decided to refund the gas fees. Some believe that the decline in Bored Apes' popularity is due to a loss of 'coolness' and suggest that Yuga Labs should work on getting the project back into mainstream media headlines.