Pudgy Penguins hosted an animated exhibition at the Las Vegas Sphere during Christmas week, projecting the penguin characters onto the venue’s outdoor screens.
In a post on
Source: Pudgy penguins
Pudgy Penguins is an NFT project founded in 2021 and acquired by entrepreneur Luca Netz in April 2022 for $2.5 million in Ether (ETH). When NFT revenues declined, Netz leveraged his background in consumer products to expand the project beyond digital collectibles and into physical toy production to generate cash flow.
“Toys generate significant revenue, but the margins are small,” Netz told Cointelegraph in an August interview. “We sell millions of dollars worth of toys today, but it took time to scale to that business.”
What started as a short-term effort to expand the company’s runway has since grown into a core business, allowing Pudgy Penguins to end the year with estimated sales of $50 million.
The company is also prioritizing Instagram to promote its brand. At the time of writing, the Pudgy Penguins account has approximately 2 million followers.
Pudgy Penguins Instagram channel. Source: Pudgy penguins
2025 has been a tough year for NFTs
The NFT market started 2025 under pressure, with sales activity declining sharply. First quarter transaction volumes fell 63% year-over-year to $1.5 billion, compared to $4.1 billion in the same period in 2024.
The downturn deepened in March, when monthly sales fell 76% to $373 million from $1.6 billion a year earlier, although a small number of collections, including Pudgy Penguins, showed relative resilience.
By the end of the year, overall market valuations had also fallen. Data from CoinGecko showed that the total NFT market capitalization fell to around $2.5 billion in December, the lowest level in 2025.
But despite the general market downturn, some NFT projects have managed to carve a niche in the market. One area that will prove strong in 2025 is real-world collectible NFTs, especially trading cards, where platforms like Courtyard.io link authenticated Pokémon cards to onchain tokens that can be traded or redeemed.
Rare Pokémon card. Source: Courtyard.io
According to CryptoSlam, Courtyard has processed more than 230,000 transactions and generated approximately $13.9 million in revenue over the past 30 days.
In an interview with Cointelegraph, Courtyard CEO Nicolas le Jeune underlined the importance of using the blockchain as a “tool, not a destination.”
“The cards you buy on Courtyard are not worth more because they are NFTs. The value is the underlying value – the NFT just gives you a better way to experience it,” he said.