Pudgy Penguins’ rebellion
A new page in NFT history is being written by Pudgy Penguins this week – the one about governance.
It has always been an exciting issue in the decentralized space, and major community disagreements, be it Bitcoin Segwit update or Ethereum roll back, have usually ended in forks, with the “opposition” forming a new blockchain (Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum Classic in these cases).
NFT space is about to live its first major community rebellion, although not against a divergent part of the community, but against the project founders.
Frustrated with Pudgy Penguins’ team inactivity and inability to deliver on their promises, a user owning 242 Penguins and known as 9x9x9 contacted them with a proposal to buy the project, only to learn that after two fundraisings the company’s treasury is empty, but the founders still expect to sell it for 888ETH. 9x9x9 has turned down the offer and published the conversation on their Twitter account, igniting the PP community’s fire ?
? Since then several companies, including NFT marketplace Mintable, have offered up to 750ETH, promising to take care of the project, developing licensing and collaborations.
However, the possibility of a buyout has been perceived by the community rather badly, many users believing that this would only encourage unscrupulous developers.
? Some of the most active PP owners, together with the airdrop platform Metadrop, came up with another solution worthy of Web3 era.
The have deployed a Wrapped Peguins smart contract, allowing PP owners to“wrap” their penguins, i.e. lock them within it and receive a corresponding Wrapped Penguin NFT in return (the procedure is reversable). This will allow the market to choose which Penguin is more valuable, and also raise funds to take back control.
3% royalties from Wrapped Penguin sales will go to the newly formed PenguDAO, with 4 PP community leaders controlling its multisignature wallet. The DAO’s goal is to buy back the Intellectual Property rights from PP founders and continue the PP story without them.
? The remaining PP team (one of the co-founders was voted out by the community via it Discord channel on Wednesday) should be quite busy now, trying to figure out the best solution to cope with the angry community. After their yesterday’s announcement “There are big changes coming to The Huddle”, they are yet to present a solution.
? It is not yet clear how the Pudgy Penguin saga will end: cash sale, Wrapped Penguins or a game-changing update from the initial team… What is clear is that the NFT community is a force to be reckoned with, and it will not shy away from using all crypto and Internet tools in its possession to have the last word ✊ , and we find it absolutely fabulous.
The average price of a Pudgy Penguin NFT has more than doubled since the beginning of the week, and the collection is back in OpenSea’s Top 10, which leads to believe that users are mostly optimistic about the Pudgy Peguins’ fate ✨
