Bankless - Can Pudgy Penguins Flip DOGE? | Luca Netz

Episode Date: February 3, 2025

In this episode of Bankless, Luca Netz, CEO of Pudgy Penguins, explores how meme coins are evolving beyond speculation. We discuss Pengu’s launch on Solana, Pudgy Penguins’ expansion into retail and gaming, and how GIFs with 300M+ daily views are driving mass adoption. Luca also shares why meme coins can be real brands and what’s next for Pudgy’s growing ecosystem. ------ 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24  https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium  ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🪙 FRAX | SELF SUFFICIENT DeFi https://bankless.cc/Frax  🦄UNISWAP | BUG BOUNTY PROGRAM https://bankless.cc/Uniswap-Bug-Bounty  ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM ⁠https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum  🛞MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle  🌐 CELO | BUILD TOGETHER AND PROSPER https://bankless.cc/Celo  🏦ONDO | INSTITUTIONAL GRADE FINANCE https://bankless.cc/Ondo   ------ ✨ Mint the episode on Zora ✨ https://zora.co/collect/base:0x4be6cd4d402fed49eb2de95fbc8e737e8ffd3e7f/24?referrer=0x077Fe9e96Aa9b20Bd36F1C6290f54F8717C5674E  ------ TIMESTAMPS 00:00:00 Intro 00:03:53 Opinion on Pengu token and its competitor 00:08:03 Reformatting the idea of a memecoin 00:12:32 Pudgy Penguins aren't just memes 00:16:09 Solana competitor vs Pengu 00:20:03 Impact of 30 Billion views on the GIFs on the brand 00:22:56 How does the GIFs system work? 00:25:27 GIFs working principle 00:27:13 Big brands doing SEO on GIFs 00:28:38 Non-crypto people using Pudgy GIFs 00:31:59 Physical Products of Pudgy Penguins 00:36:50 Other components of expanding the brand 00:38:56 How big is the conglomerate? 00:39:26 Choosing Solana L1 over L2 00:45:27 Where does Base stand in the algorithm? 00:51:26 Some thoughts on Ethereum's current state 00:55:32 Abstract Chains 01:02:58 Pudgy Penguins' relation with Abstract Chains 01:04:18 Closing & Disclaimers ------ RESOURCES Luca Netz https://x.com/LucaNetz  Pudgy Penguins https://pudgypenguins.com/   ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠  

I like the memetic category because technically the way that Pengu is structured is very much like a meme coin. But it's more than that. Saying it's a meme coin, I think is doing it a disservice. It's a culture coin. It's a community coin. It could be one day a gaming coin or an AI coin. But I think in its principle, that's the beauty of meme coins, right? Is they can be a lot of different things while still, you know, remaining a meme.

If you understand, you know, Pudgy Penguins' marketing strategy and our roots and our origin stories, it's very much memetic culture. We're getting 300 million views a day on GIFs. You know, gifts are memes, right? I said an interesting thing a year ago, but, you know, the person who controls the gifts controls the memes, and the person who controls the memes controls the world. Welcome to Bankless, where today we follow the Puggy Penguins

to the frontier of in-real-life consumer experiences and the gift layer of the Internet, and overall the growth of the Pudgy Penguin meme across both the real and the virtual worlds. This is David Hoffman, and I'm here to help you become more bankless. Luca Nets is on the podcast today. He is the man behind. pudgy penguins, which is perhaps crypto's most beloved NFT project. But today, in January of 2025,

Puggy Penguins is just so much more than an NFT project. It's now also a token. It's now also in real life plushy animals. And also a layer two as well. Luke Nets is building an empire all around growing the pudgy brand and the Pengu meme. He's rewriting the meme game strategy from the ground up. And if it works, then I think he's going to change the game of what it means to launch a meme in crypto. So we had Luca on the podcast almost a year ago in February of 2024, and we were bringing him back on to update us as the Pengu universe continues to grow and evolve to new heists. So let's go ahead and talk to Luca Nets right now. But first, a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible. With over $1.5 billion in TVL, the M.Eath protocol is home to M.Eath, the fourth largest ETH liquid staking token, offering one of the highest APRs among the top 10 LFTs.

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L1's fragmented. By becoming a layer two, Sello leads the way for other EVM-compatible layer ones to follow. Follow Sello on X and witness the great Sello happening where Sello cuts its inflation in half as it enters its layer two era and continuing its environmental leadership. Bankless Nation, very excited to introduce you to Luca Nets, the CEO of Igloo Inc, the company behind the iconic Pudgy Penguins brand. After buying the Puggy Penguins IP in April of 2022, the NFTs rocketed off the floor of the bear market and became maybe the only NFT brand and ecosystems that actually fulfilled some of the promises made by the NFT movement in 2021. Today, Puggy Penguins are the number two NFT by Market Cap, roughly valued at $620 million behind Cryptopunks at $1.3 billion. And not too long ago, the Penguins launched their Pengu token coming in at $1.5 billion in market

cap. Luca, welcome back to Bankless. Hey, David. Thanks for having me. Luca, my friend Peter Pan wrote this tweet thread that I want to propose a positioning of the Pengu token as it is in the rest of the crypto market. He compared Pengu to Dogecoin as Solana is to Ethereum. He calls Pengu the Pengu token the first meaningful Dogecoin competitor.

And I want to read a little excerpt from his tweet thread where he put this all together. He says, Dogecoin resembles the dominance of Ethereum, both highly grassroots ecosystems that grew organically in a fairly decentralized fashion. Solana was written off as it looks nothing like Ethereum, but yet it optimized in the areas that mattered, such as performance and marketing. It had a core team that excellent. executed and outpaced everyone else. The headlessness of meme coins are both a weakness and a strength, but most importantly is Pengu's opportunity. Pangoo will win the game of meme coins and

out-execute better than anyone. It has a world-class team and one of the biggest communities in crypto that is day in and day out executing and grinding away to win. Like Solana rewrote the rules of engagement for growing blockchains, Pengu will do the same for meme coins too. And under a month of trading has become Solana's biggest meme coin in under 2.5 years. Pugui Penguins has generated 37 billion views via GIFs, 1.6 million followers on TikTok, 1.7 million followers on Instagram, and 2 million toys sold globally. Pango's success so far has been largely due to its ability to bring crypto well beyond crypto natives into the broader mass market. Now, I want your opinion, your reflection on that positioning for the

Pengu token. How do you like the branding that it is the Dogecoin as Solana is to Ethereum? I think Peter really wrote that eloquently. You know, from our perspective, I think that's our thesis. And now, that isn't just our thesis for Pengu. I think that's been our thesis for the last three years, which I always thought, you know, both NFTs and now memes, you know, are categories with huge PMF and an ever-growing Tam. Yet, for some reason, they're the most underdeveloped out of all of the different categories.

And so, you know, figuring this has a huge, you know, finger on the pulse and obviously attracts, you know, consumers in a way that I think very few, you know, categories really do. You know, I think from our perspective, you know, how do you develop this stuff so that they're more than just non-sentient, stagnant, memetic, you know, pictures with, you know, good communities trying to drive that forward. You know, ultimately, when we do things like, you know, put products in toys or do long-form content, whether that's a movie or a TV show or games, you know, these things are really doing two things. They're creating demand and they're also creating love and affinity within the existing holder base, which creates conviction. And naturally, you know,

tokens are very simple in the sense that they succeed and fail based on the elementary school model of supply and demand. And, you know, the more demand that you can create and the more conviction you can create with the existing holder base, ultimately you kind of have a path towards success. You know, sometimes you can't control, at least what I think happens in the short term. And I think our history at Pudgy Penguins has shown that. But over the course of time, as we continue to push the ball forward, and we create more demand by creating more headlines, by bringing new people in through new initiatives, and then also while creating, you know, love and affinity with the existing holder base, ultimately, you have a recipe for success. And this has ultimately been the playbook that has,

you know, driven us, you know, from the best performing an NFT project of the last couple of years. I think it's the same line of thought that is going to lead to Pengu's ultimate success and dominance within the meme coin category. And the hope is really to develop this and kind of set a playbook around memes, which is, you know, memes shouldn't just do nothing. That idea of them doing nothing, I think, is irresponsible. And I've always taken the approach that, you know, if Doge had an operator behind it, or one of these major projects had operators behind it, I think they'd be exponentially more successful than they are today for the reasons I just explained. So, you know, I think we're going to be the first real team to give a crack at this thesis. It's going to be one that I think

over the course of time is going to reign true and excited to put our hat in the ring and yet another category. I find the positioning of Pengu as a meme coin interesting because previously that would be considered like insulting, I think, maybe in years past in the crypto world where if you're the founder of a company and somebody is telling you, yeah, your token is a meme coin. Your token is a meme. That would historically be an insult. But I think you're kind of turning it on its head and you're saying, well, there's this brand called Penguins, Pudgy Penguins, and there's this team that I've built that I'm the CEO of, and we are just going to push that brand forward and that brand is the meme. Explain a little bit more.

Elaborate a little bit more on how you're kind of like reformating the idea of a meme coin here. Yeah, I think from our perspective, you know, what can Pengu be? I think it can be a lot of things and I think it can tap into a lot of different categories. I mean, we could do something on the AI side and ultimately insert ourselves into that narrative. We can do things on the gaming side and ultimately insert ourselves into that narrative. I like the memetic category because technically the way that Pengu is structured is

very much like a meme coin. But it's more than that. And I think just like saying it's a meme coin, I think is doing it a disservice. It's a culture coin. It's a community coin. It's an ecosystem coin. It could be one day a gaming coin or an AI coin. But I think in its principle, that's the beauty of meme coins, right, is they can be a lot of different things while still, you know, remaining a meme. If you understand, you know, Pudgy Penguins' marketing strategy and our roots and our origin stories, it's very much memetic culture, right? Like, that's how we've gotten this far. That's the That's how we've permeated into the real world. When we're getting 300 million views a day on GIFs, you know, gifts are memes, right?

I said an interesting thing a year ago, but, you know, the person who controls the GIFs controls the memes and the person who controls the memes controls the world, you know, gifts are just embedded memetic distribution in all of the top social networks and, you know, and media channels. And, you know, on 300 million views a day, there is no memetic, you know, character that is getting that many impressions a day, not even Doge. And so, you know, eventually that will catch up and that will be priced in at some point. And the goal is to make those numbers even bigger. I think right now that's growing 10% month over month.

I think we can probably get it to 20, 25%. And then ultimately, I think you have a recipe for success. And that's just one vertical, right? There's so many different verticals within what we're doing. But I like the meme coin category because I think technically Pengu is that. The beauty of memes, and this is, you know, an unpopular opinion, but they can be many things, right? while also being a meme first. I kind of look at Pengu as like this meme coin plus plus, right, which is this idea that like,

technically it is a meme. The meme category is severely underdeveloped. I mean, literally nobody does anything in the category with the exception of probably Bonk, as I'm getting more entrenched into the ecosystem, I'm starting to learn that Bonk is probably the only meme coin that actually does anything. And it's been nothing but a net positive for them in many different ways. I mean, it's probably been one of the best meme coins of the, you know, blue chip meme coins of the last couple of years.

so give them credit where credit is due. But this idea that they have to remain stagnant and underdeveloped, I think, is fiscally irresponsible. It's doing a huge disservice to the community. It's doing a huge disservice to the character and the IP and the meme. And ultimately, I think we're going to reinvent that narrative. And so, you know, how do you go into this category that has huge PMF, huge TAM that is severely underdeveloped?

How do you develop it and ultimately set the playbook for everybody to follow? I think this is going to follow the exact same trajectory and the exact same playbook that pudgy penguins in the NFT has followed. You know, it might not feel like it in real time. Again, like, you know, my take to the community was like, look, you can't control what you can't control in the short term. But in the mid to long term, it is very obvious to me that this model and this line of thought is the model that's ultimately going to win. And ultimately it's going to be, you know, which memes are actually doing and building something tangible and real and trying to push the boundary and break the barrier and which ones aren't. And I think the ones that are, you know,

trying to push that boundary are ultimately going to be the ones that see the most success. and there'll still be tons of success with the ones that don't do anything. I mean, you'll never be able to stop that. The Pandora's box is now open. But I think if you really want to ultimately, I think, become a cultural phenomenon, which is the highest point that any of these meme coins can ultimately become, I think you have to do this. Or just pray and get lucky and hope that you get lucky, which I think is a recipe for failure or not a recipe for success. Is the world that you're illustrating something like the current instantiation of memes in the crypto space meme coins mean tokens mean tokens? in the crypto space is something like Stone Age memes, like Caveman era memes where they're just inert and like the pictures are funny and they make us laugh, but they otherwise don't really build and they don't really do much. And what you're trying to do is help evolve that part of the crypto sector, the meme coin sector, and help bring it into like the industrial era where we can put productivity and growth and development into our meme coins and just bring it into like a higher

state of being and a more productive state of being. And it's, still memes. They're still memes. They're just better, more engineered, stronger memes, and it's just more advanced. Is that kind of like what you're trying to do here? Totally. I think it's sentience versus non-sentience. Like, ultimately, you're not going to be able to beat a driving force that's inserting itself, you know, in relevancy every week, every day, every month, you know, every quarter. That recipe is just too much of a successful recipe, I think. And so, you know, I think from our perspective, you know, what does it look like if, you know, you see Shibibinu, you see some of these huge memetic coins, you know, that have, to be frank, like unparalleled valuations compared to the

traditional IP. Like, imagine how much could be done with that resource. I mean, Pepe, you know, Shiba Inu could be on Netflix and Hulu, it should be everywhere, right? You know, Pepe could be everywhere and they should be. And as you guys have seen with Pudgy Penguins in our small little case study, you know, when we do these things like put products in Walmart and do these huge partnerships with, you know, major Asian conglomerates, like ultimately, that has been huge for the space. That has made people feel good about the space. That has taken the taboo and the intimidating nature around crypto and made people feel a little more comfortable, made people feel like there were some hope. And duly justified, right? And I don't think the era of

stagnant memes is ever going to go away. Like, that is the origin story and the foundation to these things. But again, I think over the course of time, who is really going to lead the charge, who is going to be an industry leader, who is going to win this race? I think that is going to be predicated on the people and the groups and the communities that rally behind these initiatives and push things forward. And by pushing things forward, I mean more partnerships, more initiatives, more places in which the IP is relevant. And again, don't mid-curve it. When you do these things, these things are simple. They are creating more demand and they are creating more conviction to a finite supply of tokens, which ultimately, if you have enough people holding and enough people,

you know, creating demand and enough new people participating, then ultimately you get what everybody and crypto majorityly wants, which is something that goes up into the right, right? Like, that's just the elephant in the room and you have to sit in it and you have to understand it and you have to realize that is the truth. And predicated and based around that truth, I think it's just a fundamental playbook that, again, I'm not really theorizing it at this point. That's why I'm so confident in how I speak about it. Because again, like, we didn't beat everyone in NFTs because we had more money than them or because we had more resources. I mean, it was actually the complete opposite of that story, right? There's 60, 70 NFT projects that have more money than us, even probably.

probably today. And our success was really predicated around this line of thought. And I refuse to believe that that is different in the liquid token land. Well, if we're going to extend this metaphor, Pengu is to Dogecoin as Salana is to Ethereum. Salana changed the game, as Peter said, and changed the game of how to build a blockchain. And you are changing the game of what it means to build a meme. But then what happens next is that you give other people the roadmap. You give other people the blueprint to follow in your footsteps, which I'm kind of hopeful for because I think multiple different projects being productive around their own memes going in different directions is validating of what you're doing and also is just net good for the space at large. But I personally haven't seen

any. Maybe I'm naive. What does the Solana competitor, the Apto Sui say of Pengu, look like? What's that sector look like? I think right now I would probably say in the Salana ecosystem, it's probably Bonk. It would probably be the main one. Though I don't really look at it as net competitive. I actually really love that team. I think NOM is a phenomenal founder. and leader of what they're doing over there. And, you know, ultimately at the end of the day, it's one of the first times. Salon is a little interesting in the sense that it's one of the first times

I've ever been a part of an ecosystem where I feel like, you know, it's not necessarily two PVP. Now, naturally the chain can be that in the sense that, you know, capital rotations and it's really easy to kind of go into one thing and into the next. But, you know, working adjacent to some of these founders in the space, you don't really feel the same way. Like an NFT land, it feels super competitive. And then specifically the same thing,

Salana ecosystem land. I'm less focused on, you know, how do we beat Bonk? I'm more focused on, you know, why Shiba Inu still worth $13 billion when we are getting 300 million views a day. And, you know, we are probably the most beloved and popular crypto character of the last couple of years. And that is where I see the discrepancy. So I don't really look within the Salana ecosystem because it's such like an uplifting ecosystem and one where everyone's like helping each other. It's like super strange to kind of feel that. And I'm more looking at the incumbents and thinking to myself, okay, you know, really looking at Shibhino and saying to myself, like, right, I get it and it had its time, but I don't see a world where Pengu doesn't beat that. And that's really what I look

towards from a competitive standpoint. But Bonk, again, like I said, I think is the only thing in the top 10 that is actually trying to push a needle and move something forward that is trying to be proactive in posting content, that is trying to be proactive in creating sinks. And it's maybe taking a little bit of a more like traditional approach, you know, to how people run tokens and then just like a no-nothing meme that just ultimately, you know, does nothing and is nothing. So I appreciate their stance on it. I actually didn't realize that until maybe a couple of weeks ago that they were so proactive. And I respect that. It's just necessary, right? When you have communities and things that are worth billions of dollars, you have to, you know, if you don't put your

best foot forward and you don't try to develop and you don't try to push that boundary, I actually think it leans into the meme coin stigma, which is like, what is this? And why is it this way? Right. and ultimately, I think a huge part of what we've been trying to do over the last couple of years is reinvent that stigma and give people a drop of legitimacy, you know, and something that is really easily digestible and understandable. You go to your barista, you go to your local waiter, you go to the person who is, you know, gardening your front lawn. Like, they understand pudgy penguins. It's probably one of the most easily digestible things to understand in the right curve, Normie world. And that is predicated on the development that we've made. And again, you know, meme coin adoption and mean coin success is predicated. undigestability, normie adoption, all of these things, you know, ultimately, you know, when everyone in the world ultimately catches on that Pengu is existent and that this brand that they've been

participating in is actually crypto-native, I think, you know, the floodgates will open and then we'll continue on our path to success. I think the most relatable part of the Pudgy Penguin strategy is these GIF productions. The stats that I have from Peter's tweet thread, I don't know how accurate they are, is 30 billion total views on a Pudgy brand, on a Pudgy brand, on a Pugifference. via gifts. And now last time we had you on, we asked about this and you said, yeah, we just have a team that's just like pumping out gifts left and right. Can you talk about the impact that has had over the last, like, 12 months since we last talked? How has that impacted the brand? How is that driven adoption? What has that really done for the Pughey brand?

Yeah, I said this six months ago, but it's a pretty obvious one. I basically said if you're a meme team, the first thing that you should be doing is developing gifts. I mean, it is the most underutilized. Now, nobody goes to Gifts and no performant marketer like goes to GIFs as a marketing strategy because there's no conversion, right? Like, if I get a billion views, it's not like I make $10 million in sales, and so it's completely underutilized. But actually GIFI in a world where you take intangible value, intangible culture, and you tokenize it and you put a value on it, right? With something like GIFs, it is unbelievably powerful, probably the most powerful, and it's the cheapest to probably distribute and to get impressions. I mean, my CPM on GIFs is probably 0.000001.

sense, right? So, you know, the amount of money I spent on a monthly basis on gifts and the impressions that I get, which is about three and a half billion impressions a month right now, if I told you what it costs, you'd freak out, you'd be like, that's impossible. Now, for most people, again, performant marketers are not going in this direction. But when you're looking at character proliferation, like when you're running a meme coin, again, comes down a supply and demand. How do you create demand? It's character proliferation, right? So if I go and do gifts, that's more of my character are proliferating into the subconscious of crypto traders and non-cryptot traders, right? If I'm doing a movie, right, I am proliferating to non-crypto traders and to crypto traders

and ultimately proliferation segues into demand. It's not maybe instant. It can be, right? Depending on the initiative, I'd probably argue a movie probably is. But, you know, the gifts create an underbelly, right? Like there's some sort of a minimum float in terms of what Pengu is worth just simply by those gifts. Assume you do nothing else, right?

Because it is embedding yourself into internet culture. and into messaging culture and into communication culture in a way that ultimately, I think, contributes to this becoming one day, hopefully a cultural phenomenon, which again is the highest point that I think these things can go. So, you know, it's been a strategy that I think was obvious. The second I saw at work, you know, two years ago, it's been one we've continuously leaned into. We'll continue to lean into it. And I think, again, if Penguins has nothing else but continue to scale those gifts, I still think it's a top three meme coin because I think it's just too much proliferation and it's too much subconscious marketing that I think will eventually convert.

How does the gift system work? Every once in a while, I'm in my iOS, I'm on Telegram, and I'm looking at some gifts. I'm looking for a gift that I want to send a reaction gift, a gift to send to a friend. And every once in a while I see a Pengue GIF. I see a Pugu GIF. I see a Pugui Penguin Giff. And I'm like, oh, interesting. Look at that. That's a little penguin gif in my little library. How does that work? How do the penguin Gifts get elevated inside of like literally iOS or Telegram or wherever else I'm sending gifts. How does it go from production to actually like something I can select in these apps? It just, it's probably tributes to a couple of different facets. The first one of the most important one was three months into me seeing like how powerful this was

because the community aided up the second we started doing them because we used to do them around people's penguin, right? So, you know, there's pretty much, isn't it an NFT that's on the floor right now that doesn't have its own gift. So you can kind of tie the two together and it kind of creates again love and affinity, which creates conviction, right? If you're messaging your friends and family with your gifts of your NFT, you're less likely to sell it because now you're using it as a form of expression. Right. I think that the most important one is, and I kind of just did this being a marketer, staring at it for three months, was there's actually a way to index it, kind of like how you do SEO on Google. There's a way to do like a gift optimization for those

key terms. And then probably the second one is just understanding viral key terms and getting quickly and indexing them quickly enough. So like Riz and like there'll be things within the internet culture around Gen Z and Gen Alpha, which will start speaking about, or trends, right? Like, you know, if Trump is viral today, right? Like, my instruction to the team is 100 Trump gifts now, right? So we're indexed for the word. We need more gifts. Need more gifts on the specific category. If Riz is trending, then you'll do Riz. And then you'll kind of just go through the framing. So you also need somebody with a real finger on the polls to make sure that you're catching those trends. Because, like, me indexing for something like love is really competitive because everyone's posting love. But no one's

competing for Riz, right? And all the kids and all the people that I want, you're using it, right? And then the influencers are using it and the celebrities are using it and then it just becomes a compounding effect. So those would probably be the two biggest points of alpha. And I don't mind sharing it at this point. Our moat here is so big. Yeah, I actually want more people to do it at this point. So it just makes our moat look even cooler. Right. You know, but that's the secret sauce between the two facets of how I think those two things succeed. My intuition here, Luca, is that the reason why this works is because you have a,

token that monetizes this effort by proxy, not directly, like you said, very indirectly, but by embedding the Pudgy Penguin brand into the meme layer, the culture layer of the internet via GIFs, that has some feedback into the value of the Penguin token. And I'm guessing that no one else is optimizing for SEO inside of GIFI, inside of like the GIF layer of the internet. So it's free real estate for you. But that real estate is valuable because you have a token, because you have tokenized this brand. And that's really, why you can pour resources into embedding the penguin brand into the gift layer of the internet. Is that correct analysis? Yeah, it's a correct analysis. So unless you're somebody like me who has

that type of tokenization moat or you're like a Disney where you have billions of dollars, like you fiscally can't justify spending $50,000 a month on it if you're not one of those two things. Right. Like if you don't have a movie or a Premier Legacy IP, then it makes sense to spend $50,000 to $100,000 a month on that. They should be and none of them are doing it, right? But that's the nature of some of these conglomerates that have just been stagnant for a long time. And then on the other side, I've been making a call to action and all the crypto folks that have tokenized assets, which is like, it's not that hard to stand up a team for $25,000 a month at $5,000, $7,000, people, you know, in different parts of the world that are all like, you know, just have a system

and a machine. Like, we have a whole backend interface that we built for this. So we have like a whole, you know, $150,000, $200,000 build around how the gifts are organized. So it goes in, we have like, We've built it out, so now it's actually quite literally a machine and a software. But it's really not, and this was before AI, so with AI, you could probably do it for a tenth of the cost. And you could build something pretty incredible. To your knowledge, is Disney or some other large brand like that optimizing SEO inside of the gift layer of the internet? Or is it really, to your knowledge, only you? So the way that we're doing it from an indexing perspective, I wouldn't know unless I talk to one of their teams.

But I know there's a couple, you know, companies like SpongeBob, like certain IPs really value it. And it's been huge for them, right? You know, the real epiphany for me is when I went to Asia and I learned that Lion Friends built a billion dollar business off a sticker IP, right? So when you look at, you know, the GIFs, the GIFs are not just gifts, they're stickers. So you look at, you know, the metric that Peter gave was actually wrong. It's about $40 billion on GIF today. So you go to GIFI.com slash Pudgy Penguins.

You'll see the number. It's like $39 billion and some change. So call it $40 billion. But then you have Tenor, which is like another $30 billion. Like I'm giving you the metrics that I know you can go in fact check. But if I gave you the metrics that you can't go, in fact, check because the backend portal will just, you know, there's no way for you to verify it. I mean, it's half a billion views a day, you know, or impressions, right, you know, through these channels. And they're real. Like, it actually does create a moat for the IP and for the brand. And if you don't believe it from our case study, look at line friends. Look at some of these other Asian IPs. Asian IPs have completely succeeded, you know, off of this one vertical and then obviously growing the brand outside of that. But this is the origin story for a lot of these new next. generation IP businesses. So I'm assuming because of the success of this effort, people are sharing the pudgy GIF without knowing that there's like a crypto community, crypto project, crypto token.

If they just like are looking for a GIF to react to, to use, to express themselves, they see the pudgy GIF and they just select that one for whatever reasons. And then that has some positive feedback into the whole ecosystem. Are there any like stories or anecdotes that you can give of like somebody so far away from the Pudgy brand using the Pudgy GIF in some sort of. way that has like impacted or brought attention to pudgy in any sort of way yeah Cynthia Loomis posted the pudgy money printer right yeah who's talking about one of the things I mean you know there's so many celebrities and influencers that I can name you know biggest k-pop stars in the world you know Andrew Tate went on a week when it was just like every day is using pudgy gifts and do you

know that they don't know that there's a crypto project associated with the gifts most of the time they don't right but the impact is is not necessarily like I'm not necessarily too focused on that because I think that crypto is ever growing and eventually it will click. And that aha moment and that moment of discovery, I think, is really meaningful. What's even more meaningful in terms of direct conversion today is when your mom or your girlfriend sends you a pudgy gift and you are in crypto and you're thinking yourself like, they could have picked any other gift. There was something subconscious about the penguin.

And again, that maybe might not drive you to buy Pengu or to buy an NFT, right? But it'll be the first starting point. So that will be your first point of impression. So touch point number one. then maybe I do a headline that shakes up the space once again. And then you're like, damn, right? And then you go to a friend's, you know, daughter's birthday, and then you see she got a pudgy penguin toy.

And then you get in all these different touch points. And then at a certain point, it becomes fiscally irresponsible for you if you have NFT exposure or meme coin exposure to not have exposure here because one is clearly impacting and transcending into your everyday life, while the other things that you're rotating in or gambling on or not. Right? And so then you make the decision, are you a trader or are you an investor? And obviously, I think we've been a great ecosystem for investors for that reason.

You know, if you're a trader, that's your prerogative and you have your own plan and your own thesis on how you kind of deploy your capital. But we tend to really have a home for people who invest in things long term because that point of discovery and that sequence has happened many, many times times. Right. You know, just recently a guy in Singapore was at an arcade, you know, and Singapore, of all places. And at time zone, and at time zone, you just saw some pudgy toys in the arcade. machine. He went and bought five big pudgies, 20 little pudgies, and is now, you know, he crushed, you know, this was a couple of months ago. So, you know, he's now made a ton of money on all of that. Now has Pengu. And is stoked that he made that revelation and came to that choice

and that decision. And again, that's the recipe, right? That is the line of thought. That's how we've won. I haven't won because I outspend somebody or because we had more resources. We beat everyone, at least, you know, up until this point, because of this line of thought of like, hey, this is how this stuff works. And though it might not give you immediate gratification, it will give you long-term success, which is ultimately what we're optimizing for. Last time we talked, it had been on the back of the Walmart announcement where Walmart was going to be selling physical plushy, pudgy penguin toys. And then that went when those went on sale, that went very, very well. I believe Walmart sold out very quickly and had to re-up. And that was also in a very dark era of crypto's histories. Like the penguins at

the time defy the status quo by making very real progress in the actual in real life world as an NFT brand. But I think that was the last update that I have and that many bankless listeners have about the physical expansion of the Pudgy brand. So what else has been happening? Can you update us on the physical side of the Penguin brand? Yeah, two million toys sold, 10,000 retailers. I'm going to be in Walmart again for 2025. So into three reorders, which, you know, to be frank, David, when I did the Walmart thing, it was a huge risk. We went two. big, too quick. Thankfully, crypto and the industry stepped up and got our back on that. But that was, the brand did not have enough pull to do something like that. But I also knew that if I didn't do

something like that, that's a once in a lifetime opportunity to do an initiative of that magnitude, you've got to take it and you got to roll the dice and got to put it all in the line. Thankfully, it didn't bite us in the ass. And on the third reorder, you can confidently say, like, we succeeded. Like, we did not fail and we did not let the industry down, at least on the consumer product side, which I think is pretty beautiful and pretty awesome. I mean, I think it's close to 400,000 people scan those QR codes and redeem their NFTs, right? Like, that is a beautiful story. You know, in a couple weeks here, I think it will cross a million paid and licensing

to the holders whose NFTs we alchemized and put on those shelves, which is pretty beautiful. Million dollars and real money, I know it's not a lot of money in Crypto Land, but a million dollars generated the real way. I mean, that's just a fraction of what was generated, but, you know, a fraction of that being paid to people, that tells a really good story. That tells a, that's a new form of IP creation, the likes of which that was only possible with crypto rails. And in this case, you know, obviously built on Ethereum, ZK. Sink and a lot. So, you know, pretty exciting. I think, you know, we're going to continue on this path in 2025. I know our treat creative officer wants to reinvent our strategy here a little bit.

We want to go a little more premium in the sense that, you know, not premium that like we're only going to sell $100 products, but, you know, we're selling like $5 toys, like let our cheapest toy be. $12 or $15 is up the quality. Let's just build something that has a real long-term moat from an IP perspective. And so we'll see what that looks like north of 2025. But so far, we're going to start off this new year and go through this new year, as we've been going on the physical product side. And maybe we reinvent things at the end of 2025, you know, based on Peter's assessment. The Arbitrum portal is your one-stop hub to entering the Ethereum ecosystem.

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Are there any other components of expanding the penguin brand that we haven't talked about? Is there anything else? Andy Stone I haven't under overturned. No, I just would anticipate at some point this year. We're going to announce something huge, I think, on the long-form content side, whether that's a movie or a TV show. we have two premier games coming out. One, it's like our club penguin style pudgy desktop game, which I think is going to be really exciting. That will be here really soon. We have a mobile game

that we've been working on, kind of like a fall guy, stumble guys, you know, pudgy penguins version that will be mobile only. I think that game specifically, I'm very confident that I'll break crypto records with that. I've had a number one product on the app store before with something like this, with the community that we have now with Pengu. I'm confident we'll be the first ever crypto, you know, native thing to be number one on the app store across all categories and we'll be able to hold it for quite a bit of time. So excited to break that barrier and make history there when the time comes. And, you know, I've got some more things up my sleeve, some big partnerships that I think are akin to Walmart, akin to Target, some of the things that we've done there. The goal for us is in

2025 is we really have to take this thing further than we ever have taken it. And we have to do it in six months rather than three years. And I plan on being held accountable to that standard. I think we will do it. And so we will just have to see how the year shakes out. But this is very much our year that we cement ourselves as, you know, the biggest in the best, not only in NFTs, but in memes. And I also think we'll solidify that in L2s, which we'll probably talk about here shortly. So I very much want to be the consumer conglomerate, this igloo behind me is very much our goal for the holding company that holds all of these different businesses, is how are we the most important consumer entity within crypto? I think with the number one NFT, the number one or the number two or

the number three meme and the number one or the number two L2, we will very much solidify our position as the consumer conglomerate. So that's a big year for us. Yeah, wow. How big is the conglomerate? Like how many total people, employees are working, you know, are all rowing in the same direction here? About 105 between all the businesses. We're making an acquisition now, which you'll probably see here sooner rather than later, 60 people at Pudgy, 40 people at abstract, five people between, you know, some of the foundations, the holding company and overpass, which probably like that. has like two or three people at this point. So yeah. Definitely elevates you to one of the biggest organizations in crypto, I think. So congratulations on all that. I definitely do want to talk about the

layer two, but I think there's an order of operations here first, because with chains come tokens, and you have a token, but that token was issued on Solana. So let's talk about that choice, because that caused a bunch of consternation in the Ethereum community and a bunch of a chest beating by the Salana community. Maybe talk about the choice to issue the token on the Solana Layer 1, even while knowing that you have your own layer two under development. Yeah, it's a great question. I think from our side, the plan was actually deployed on abstract. The problem was abstract wasn't ready.

And so were you going to force something that wasn't ready just to do it this way? And I think ultimately, like, there's a reason why abstract is not Pudgy chain, right? Like, they are two separate entities. And it's my job to make sure that each one is doing what's in the best interest of their respective communities. Right. And so in this case, you know, Pudgy's community was best served, in my opinion. opinion going to Solana versus going to any other chain. I believe this because of all of these impressions and all of this viewership and all of this demand that we have outside of the Cryptosphere,

it is very clear that those new users are coming in via Salana. And Salana simply just has the best experience for that new user base to come in and to convert. So if I promote, you know, Pengu on my Instagram and there's a bunch of people who know nothing about, you know, Pengu, but they love the brand and maybe they want to research it and maybe they want to get their beak wet, no pun intended, you know, pointing them to Phantom and Solana is easily the best experience for them. It's really hard to refute that. I can tell you this as somebody who has been working on Ethereum for the last couple of years. And, you know, you can just see it in the volume, can see it in the trading behavior. You can also see this force of nature that is the Salana

community. I also see opportunity there. Who has really harnessed that force of nature? There's been a couple guys, Mur, Meow, a couple others, but none really in memes that have really sat there and galvanized and rallied the troops and really put their flag into the ground and said, you know, we are going to harness this force of nature. And I've been a huge fan of that community for a long time. I've been a huge fan of the people within that organization, both on the Salana Foundation and just the kingmakers, right? The thing is, and we'll probably talk about this in a sec, but the kingmakers of Salana, the guys who made so much money, life-changing money, generational money, right, whether there are funds or individuals, they are so supportive, right?

They're willing to put their money where their mouth is. I don't think there's a single ETH ICO guy who owns a Pudgy Penguin NFT, right? And so there's an important delineation there, right? And these are how ecosystems are made is how are people, you know, coming back and putting it back into the ecosystem. So when I go and reach out to the Salana Foundation, I say, this is something that we want to do, I've got Raj, I've got Tolley, I've got Pedro, I've got all of these guys, you know, they're connecting me to Joe, and Kyle and all of them are taking my call within 24, 48 hours. And, you know, the big brain guys, they're all figuring out how to support. Mert is running his own company, stops what he's doing and helps build my launch.

Like, what is going on here? You know, don't you have other things to do? And he's just willing to sacrifice. And, you know, I kind of talked about earlier in the call. Like, you don't have that on Ethereum. And, you know, I actually talked to some people about this. You know, it's also Ethereum's job is not that, you know, Ethereum, I think, I was trying to accomplish something different.

right and we can go into what I think that difference is between Salon and Ethereum fundamentally and from an ideological perspective and I think they both serve two really important routes I think for the future of human society but I think when you're looking at you know I'm going into something I've never done before right never participated in a token launch you know I've got you know this ecosystem which again I wasn't dead set you know for obvious reasons I wanted to stay Ethereum aligned and then I got on a call with these guys you know and then I was like still on the fence And then I get on another call and I'm like, well, you know, there's so many calls I'm having here and so many introductions. It's almost like the straw that broke the camel's back, which is, I think there's two compelling cases for why somebody would launch an Ethereum versus Solana.

But, you know, ultimately, when you look at the fundamentals, when you look at, you know, onboarding new users, when you look at the actual support from a foundational level and from a community level. And then you also look at the opportunity in the bar, right? Like, I think there's still a bar to be set on Solana. and there's still growth to be had there. And then maybe the last point to it before I hand it off back to you, because I'm sure you have a slew of questions, which is like, I want pudgy penguins and pengu to be the face of crypto,

not the face of Ethereum, right? This is super important for us. It's been a mission that I've been really clear on for the last couple of years. I have never been chain specific. I've actually been really chain agnostic and trying to go to as many chains as possible, not doing dilutive things, but having a presence, because I think that's important.

And having Maxis is a real situation. And so, you know, this seemed like a great opportunity where it's like, look, we have our NFT ecosystem that is succeeding in a super meaningful way. And now let's go and unify the two, which at the end of the day, we're all pushing crypto forward. And we, you know, if you guys were to go eat with Tolley and Raj and, you know, we put all of our crypto and our business hats aside, we'd all have a great meal and we'd have a good time.

And we want to just push this industry forward because there's enough Tam here for everyone to succeed tremendously. The kicker is, it's just like, you know, in the short term, obviously, we can get a little competitive. And I think that only helps, right? You're seeing the tone shift with on the east side. Like that was long overdue. And that is because of the berating from the Salana community and the chest pounding. And somebody's got to give you a run for your money to compete. And obviously, I think Salana is that horse. So I'll hand it off back to you, David, because I'm sure there's a lot to unpack there. Yeah, no, I totally see the logic. It makes a ton

of sense to me. And I'm seeing a very similar phenomenon happen. I think in the AI space or the AI agent space is something that we're covering a lot on bankless. And the chain tribalism is just not found in the AI agent space. And it's actually quite the opposite. It's much more aggregative of chains and communities more than it is tribalistic. And that's a refreshing. It's what I want to see for myself in 2025 and moving forward is like there's ways to just operate above the chains. And that's what I see you doing with having Penguin NFTs on Ethereum, the Pengu token on Solana, and then having the brand that is above both of the chains. And I mean above as in like literally at the higher level of the tech stack and then it's operating in the real world.

And I hope that that is kind of how the industry moves forward. But I do want to kind of just like really nail at the point home. Salana brands itself as a consumer chain. It's a consumer chain for people who are building products. And who are you? Luca, you are building a consumer product. And so it just seems like there was some resonance there. And it's not just in the Salana tech stack that you found. It's also in the social support. The social network was also people helping people build products. And so overall, that just kind of won you over. Is that a fair way to articulate it? I think that's a fair way to articulate it. Yeah. But what about base? I'm sure Jesse and the base team over there were bummed that they didn't have the opportunity to get the Pangoo token launched

on base. Where did base stand in your algorithm? Give me that part of the process. Yeah, I think there was no chance that another L2 would do it because we did have a competing L2. So if we're going to launch on an L2, we might as well have it be ours. And I will say, you know, I try to give his credit where credit just do every time I get on the podcast and bass as mentioned. I think Jesse and that team are the epitome of operational excellence and the Ethereum community should be stoked that they have somebody like that. This is a real warrior and a team that has a bunch of champions. But they've also been running around with no competition and that changes in a week's time because it's just like I think no one's been able to actually help push them on the L2 side. I think right now I don't look at

ZK Sync or Arbitrum or Optimism. as L2s, I look at them as nucleus to text stacks, right, that are ultimately the nucleus to this super chain or the elastic network, whichever one they are trying to push forward. So, you know, from a fundamental, like true L2, I think it's base, and then there's really nobody else.

And then from base's perspective, you know, they're running a great ship. If I wasn't launching an L2, it definitely would have been something I considered. I probably would have still went to Solana because, again, I think there is something fundamental when an ecosystem has a token, right? And this

is something that base is going to have to address at some point. There is so many people, like I had mentioned, in the Salana ecosystem that put so much money back into the Salana ecosystem off of so much money they made from Salana. And that's a really interesting flywheel. And the Ethereum folks are probably my best piece of advice and probably my biggest piece of resentment over the last couple of years with Ethereum. And realistically, you know, I think Ethereum is doing something for humanity that is so important. But I felt so much lack of support from huge guys whose Ethereum has changed their lives,

order of magnitudes, in ways they couldn't even have fathom. We're talking hundreds of millions, of not billions of dollars, not understanding that, you know, putting things back into the ecosystem, you know, is so critically important to its success. Like, don't underestimate the top of NFTs and the top of Ethereum, right? Like how important NFTs really were to the Ethereum ecosystem and to the Ethereum price action. It created real demand for the token that people were participating in and constantly sloshing around. You know, I can just speak to one that's close to home because they're investors and they've been, you know, pretty much mentors in me throughout this journey. The big brain crew, I mean, they'll go chuck, you know, millions of dollars a week into projects and writing it off to

zero. Like, they're not even looking to make a profit on it because they're already so deep in Solana. They've won so big into the ecosystem. They look at it as like, well, if these things don't start catching bids and these guys who are building don't see some sort of success or some sort of momentum, like ultimately that's going to stagnate the entire ecosystem. And it's not just one guy doing it. That's one example. There's 50, 100 guys that are taking this type of approach. And like I said, it was a little bit of a shot and I didn't mean to, but it's like, I don't know one ETH ICO participant who owns a Pudgy Penguin. You're right? Like maybe there's a couple, right? But again, like the main figureheads of Ethereum, they don't participate in that stuff. And I just think to myself,

is why. And that is the fundamental crux. It's not necessarily, you know, ideologies. People love the nitpick when things are going wrong, right? So when things are going wrong, everyone will try to nitpick 100 different things. It's really just momentum into certain core projects within the ecosystem that I think, you know, helps spearhead price action, you know, for some of these things. And NFTs were so big, so big for Ethereum. And it felt like the last couple of years, they just let that go to the wayside. Granted, it was a disaster for some of these projects. And so I understand. the hesitancy, but you're going to have to participate in the on-chain economy some way, somehow, and bolster these builders and make people feel good and put that money to work.

And if you lose 10% of your stack doing it, the argument is, is price going to be worth 10% more or 20% more or 30% more because of it? And Salada has proven that the answer is yes. And Ethereum, I think, at one point, was really doing this well. I want to say that. And in 2020, they were doing this well. And then something somehow, over the last couple of years, years, people were like, oh, we just retired. We did our job, and now it's on to the next guard. But the old guard still very much plays a role. No, I think you're totally spot on. This is giving me flashbacks

to conversations and thoughts and discussions I was having in 2019 to 2020, but it was Ethereum to Bitcoiners, where Bitcoiners had made so much money, and there was no mechanism for them to recycle their capital back into the ecosystem. And it was part of that exodus of Bitcoin builders going to Ethereum because of Gitcoin grants. And he's just, like the community was so supportive. And a lot of what you're saying is giving me flashbacks to like an older era of Ethereum. And that all of the stuff that you've described is totally what Ethereum was all about. And slowly that has decayed over the years into something that we are now seeing on Twitter today. We're recording us on the 21st when Ethereum Twitter is having a

little bit of a cultural schism, I will say. Let me give one bull take because I felt like I should have a little bit on Ethereum. And I have so much gratitude for that. I mean, without Ethereum, all this stuff is different. This whole industry. different. So you've got to get pay homage, repaamages do. I think what Ethereum is doing, from my perspective, I think is creating a necessity for humanity. You know, when I look at it, I don't get mad as an Ethereum holder. I buy Ethereum and I hold it because of what I think its role in creating a decentralized network state and how important I think that is for humans, right? Like, I don't look at it as a thing that is like driving to drive value like that. Its intent is to do that. I don't think the Ethereum

Foundation and the core devs are like working every day to drive value to Ethereum because they have a bigger purpose, right? And you know, you just have to pick what you want to support and what thing matters to you. But a decentralized network state that's immutable and censorship resistant and can stand the test of time and it's battle tested and, you know, stays on at all times, right? Like, this is really important, right? Especially for things like stable coin infrastructure and just like how money is going to move in the future on the internet. It is such an important foundational layer. The problem is you're now, you know, the loudest people in the room are the people that

want value driven to them. And so now you have a little bit of a conundrum where you have a human necessity and a thing that is really important for the foundation of where I think society is going to go over the next couple of years and decades and centuries, right? And then you have this idea of like driving value. You know, I look at Salana as like a value driver, right? you got two guys in the driver's seat with a foundation and these guys are animals, right? And they're just, you know, they're going at 100 miles an hour and they're just ready to win, right?

It gives me like very competitive, you know, sports team vibes over there, which resonates with me because I'm super like that. But let's not say that that is amazing while also not saying that what Ethereum is doing is so important for society, right? Because right now it's the only thing that is so far along in this thesis. And I don't think anyone will beat them at that thesis, right? this idea of this immutable network that will always stand the test of time, this is, I think, really, really important. And so regardless of price, I know I will always support Ethereum because I want to support what I think is a layer that will be important for the future of humanity. And so that's how I delineate it internally. And just so, you know, months ago, you know, when things

are bad, I'm also as a builder, you know, I'm talking to people like, I wish somebody from Ethereum would help. And they would tell me, like, you know, they would mentor me and be able to like, look, well, Ethereum's not built for that, right? There's other chains that are built for what you're looking for, this type of support, this type of things. Like, Ethereum's purpose is bigger than you. And I accepted that. And I said, you're right. And that was a big aha moment for me. So I think it's an important delineation for everyone listening. That's at least how I think of it. And maybe that's inspires others to think of it the same way. Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's right. Yeah. Vitalik and other Ethereumist leadership has always been trying to be a bulwark against

the degradation of incumbents and the degradation of like previous systems. And that means kind of just being a bulwark against, like driving value, being product focused, all of that sort of things. It's a different level of priorities. And I think the Ethereum project has always been pretty like tunnel visioned in that direction. Okay, that's that conversation. I want to open up where I've been trying to get to, which is abstract chain. Tell us about abstract chain why it is, what it is, and then what its future like integration into the pudgy ecosystem will be. Yeah, so I think you're going to see the first crack. And there's some learnings here from Salana, where Salana compromise a little bit on the decentralization of things, which is this like obviously an important narrative specifically for the Ethereum ecosystem. They decided to centralize a little bit more. And, you know, Salana, I think is more decentralized and I think people give it credit for. But I'm not the person to have this argument with people because I'm not the most technically sound, you know, person to debate on it. But, you know, so I'm told, it's a little more decentralized and I think people give it credit for. But nonetheless, they compromise a little. little bit on the centralization, decentralization side to ultimately kind of focus on being

performant, right? And obviously that performance was, you know, that the argument is, is that, you know, blockchains need to be performant above all else, which it was an interesting thesis at the time, which I think has since reigned true to some extent, at least I know from the Salana perspective's, you know, mine is probably range true to some extent. Now, I think from our perspective, I actually believe there's an interface layer. That's a little more centralized and I think people are used to, that ultimately is, I think, going to usher in the new era of consumer adoption, and I think it's going to be the new approach that I believe blockchains are going to take moving forward. And so to give you some clarity, I actually look at most blockchains a day,

like 4chan. And so I say that because if you know how to navigate 4chan, right, there's maybe one central destination, and then you can kind of go to different places and do different things, and it can be super beneficial if you know how to navigate it. But if you all don't know how to navigate it, it can be super harmful, you know, in this case, in the blockchain sense, you could lose all your money. Right. And so there's this fragmented feel of blockchains today that feel like Fortune. And I think what you're going to see at abstract is the first crack at this trying to feel like an Instagram, right, which is how do you make it a little more curated, a little more interface specific? I think a huge ton of the innovation coming from blockchains moving forward is going to be around the interface layer. And so what I think you guys will see here by the end of the month, by the end of the month, I'm certain. So this is January is I think you're going to see something that feels like a consumer crypto terminal. right something where you put an email on a password and you're given a smart wallet and you are on this interface and this interface you can trade you can discover you can participate you can make friends

you can stream and watch content and the content that you're watching can ultimately be abstract you know ecosystem projects that you then can go and participate in but when you think about it this seems pretty obvious but there should be you know for most ecosystems there should be one singular domain in which you go to and which you can do everything on chain and you shouldn't have to leave that domain, right? You shouldn't have to go install in an extension. You should be able to do everything through one singular destination. And so the thought process for us was how do we work backwards around like this type of behavior, which is, you know, right now you go tell somebody to do something on Ethereum. Let's say it's my local waiter or barista, you know, it's going to take them forever to kind of get

there, right? Versus if I told them to go to this abstract domain, right, call it, you know, abstract.com for the sake of the conversation, it won't be that. But if you go to abstract.com, you know, and you give a barista or waiter an action, right? They should be able to fulfill that action fairly quickly, right? Within minutes, not hours, which I think if you told somebody to go buy this coin on Ethereum today, it'd probably take them a couple hours and figure it out, somebody who's just new to the space.

And this experience has to be completely abstracted. Now, that opens up a certain can of worms, but I also think it opens up a ton of opportunity for users to onboard in a way that I think we haven't seen before. And so I think that's going to be what you're going to see from us. I think you're going to see an eco-conference, system that is predicated around entertainment. It's predicated around discretionary spending and fun. I want to own fun. I want to own virality. I want to own discretionary spending on EVM.

I think you're going to see an experience on the EVM that feels closest to Solana than I think you've ever seen. So you be able to swap on this portal, you know, in this terminal, the swaps are instant. You know, there's no signatures. You just swap in and out, just like you would on Phantom. And I think you're going to see a new and reinvention around a meta on how, chains reward a certain user base. So there's a stream section on the platform. I think it's going to be one of the most powerful sections, if not the most powerful section on the platform. Well, we're basically going to take some future rewards from, you know, an abstract token if and when it comes. And we're basically going to consolidate these rewards to a finite group of people, call it 1,500,

2,000 people, right, that are all going to be streaming products on the network, right, advertising and playing games or, you know, trading on the network, and they're going to be rewarded for them bringing people onto the network, whether that's, you know, via their stream. That stream is going to be weighted, you know, via viewership. And if they're pinning, you know, products on that stream that are abstract related, right? So they'll be able to become advertisers for the abstract network and for the abstract ecosystem apps. And I think you'll ultimately be able to take one of crypto's greatest phenomenons, which is this making money out of thin air phenomenon, and take some of that free money and give it to a concentrated group of people, this concentrated group of people being creators,

right? I've been a huge believer of this over the last couple of years. I've been screaming this to the marketplaces, which is like creators are the ones that bring the eyeballs. They're the ones that bring the narrative. They're the ones that bring their audiences and the attention. And the fact that nobody wants to reward creators in crypto or that nobody has built a system to reward creators, I think as simple as this may sound, I think reinvents the entire narrative and the entire meta around how chains TGE and kind of launch these products, because I don't think you're going to be able to beat my 1500,000 creators, the biggest creators and influencers in crypto,

all streaming and trying to bolster and benefit my network versus other networks who just don't have that flywheel and that mechanism in place. I think it's going to be a black hole of attention in L2 land once we launch this. And not only in L2 land, I think a majority of chains outside of Solana and Ethereum, I think any chain wanting to compete with this existing flywheel in place is going to have a hard time competing because creators control the narrative. Content creators are everything. They're the backbones of all the GTMs, of all the PMFs.

And don't take my word for it. Just look at the biggest businesses in the world, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. All of these businesses are predicated around the content creator, around the person creating content. And for some reason, nobody in crypto has done it before. And so, you know, if this thing is successful, how do you give $100 million to, you know, 1,500, 2,000 streamers? I think it's going to change everything. So we'll see. But that's a little bit of the TLDR on

abstract and ultimately what you're going to see here within the next seven, eight days. Well, Luca, you talk a big game. How does all of that fit into Puggy Penguins? How does that overlap with the Penguin brand? Yeah, so you're going to see it here shortly. But there's going to be a tie in between Pengu and Abstract in some meaningful way, one that I think is going to be really exciting for specifically the Pudgy Penguin ecosystem, the Pingu holder and the NFT ecosystem specifically. And you guys will see that sooner rather than later. We're kind of on the verge of trying to push this through and kind of making an announcement there.

And that's a big moment. And when that big moment comes to fruition, you guys will see it and you guys will know it. The other side of it is just like the little things. Like you want to tip a streamer on abstract, you got to tip them in Pengu, right? It's going to be the way it is. You got to buy some Pengu and give them tips. Tips will be exclusive there. You know, we'll take a portion of the tips.

You know, we'll burn our portion. And obviously the streamers can either align themselves and, you know, push Pengu or they can do whatever they want with it. and I think that'll be one. All the gifts, all the emotes on the platform will be penguin oriented. So there'll be a lot of subtle levers that we can pull. But there is one really big lever, one that I think a lot of people have been, you know, talking about and trying to figure out what we're going to do in this respect.

And we're probably going to give a lot of clarity there, you know, sooner rather than later. Well, Luca, you have certainly built an empire and it's only two and a half years into it. So it's been very impressive to watch you grow this thing into the ecosystem that you have today. So congratulations on all the success, my man. If somebody is just really learning about the penguin brand for the first time and they are interested in just learning more, diving deeper, going down the rabbit hole, where should they start? Where should they go? Just give me a follow.

Luca Nets on X, Pudgy Penguins on X, Pudgy Penguins on Instagram, TikTok. Stay apprised with the brand and looking forward to having some of these listeners listening today. Join us in the huddle. Thanks, Luca. One more question for you. I'm on the hunt for podcast guests. Who is Luca Nets' hero inside or even outside of the crypto space that you would enjoy hearing on bank lists? Who should I go reach out to?

I think the most important person for me and my journey has been Primo from Layer Zero. And if you haven't had Primo from Layer Zero, he's been the coolest dude. Brian, Brian. Yeah, Brian, yeah. So he's been my biggest mentor, the coolest dude, my biggest support system, always trying to steer me in the right direction. I really love him. Obviously, I love Alex from Nansen.

I love talk about Hunter Horsley, you know, from Bitwise. Penguins. These are all pudgy penguin who is on Twitter, right? I got to chill the tribe. Those would be the four people. Matt from Van Ack, Hunter from Bitwise. Primo would be at the top of my list from Layer Zero. Obviously, I think what he's doing is probably one of the most important protocols in crypto for obvious reasons.

And then Alex from Nansen, I know he's got some cool things cooking. Luca, thanks for coming on Bankless today. Thank you. Bankless Station, you guys know the deal. Crypto is risky. You can lose what you put in, even if it's in NFTs. But nonetheless, we are headed west. This is the frontier.

It's not for everyone, but we are glad you are with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.