The last NFT boom has lost a lot of its luster as millions of dollars have been lost on worthless digital works of art.

But a few projects have retained their value and cultural appeal.

Pudgy Penguins is one.

The collection of 8,888 penguin NFT profile pictures recently reached a new all-time high price of around 22 ETH after rising around 40% in a week.

Other long-running projects such as Bored Apes and CryptoPunks recorded similar jumps in line with the rise in Bitcoin price. Now that the crypto market is rising again, Pudgy appears to be well positioned. Its CEO Luca Netz recently announced that it will launch its own PENGU token on Solana in 2025. About a quarter of the tokens will be reserved for the project’s NFT holders, while other tokens will be reserved for Solana and Ethereum users.

Pudgy’s success is a testament to the work of Netz, which acquired the Pudgy Penguins NFT collection in April 2022 after a bidding war with Web3 influencer BeanieMaxi and others. Netz has kept the brand relevant, selling 1.5 million plush toys at Walmart and Target.

Pudgy has a loyal online following with 2 million followers on Instagram, 520,000 followers on TikTok, and 205,000 followers on X (formerly Twitter). Penguin character videos have racked up 32 billion views on Giphy.

Pudgy was the second largest NFT project of the last cycle and Netz expects the good times to return now.

“We’re in a bull market here,” he said. “This is exciting.” This changes things. I think we’re going to see the madness we’ve seen before.” CoinDesk partnered with the Pudgy Penguins team to illustrate this year’s Most Influential People list. Netz says he hopes Pudgy is the type of brand that is suitable for everyone in the crypto space. “Penguins want to be the mascot of crypto. We want to represent the entire space,” he said.

This profile is part of CoinDesk’s Most Influential 2024 package. For all of this year’s nominees, click here.