Pudgy Penguins Rewards Over 7 Million Wallets in $PENGU Airdrop

After weeks of eager anticipation, the Pudgy Penguins’ memecoin, $PENGU, was launched on Solana. Over 7 million crypto wallets from various networks are eligible for rewards, making the $PENGU TGE one of the most widespread airdrops in crypto history.

OG Solana and Ethereum users across the industry received generous allocations, with surging demand overwhelming the official $PENGU claim API.

How did the Solana community respond to their allocations and what’s next for $PENGU?

Solana and ETH OGs Rewarded

At 1 PM UTC, the Pudgy Penguins NFT collection opened the floodgates, launching $PENGU on the Solana blockchain. According to the Pudgy Penguins team, over 7 million wallets were eligible to claim $PENGU, with OG users from Solana and Ethereum rewarded handsomely.

Beyond set allocations for Pudgy Penguin, Lil Pudgys, and Pudgy Rods, allocations were also given to users who claimed the ‘Elite Chad’ role in the official Abstract Discord server. This role was awarded to holders of iconic Solana NFT collections, including Solana Monkey Business, DeGods, and Claynosaurz.

Allocations for Solana OG users were more vague. Network participants from across Solana reported various allocations based on their activity. Meanwhile, Phantom shared via its 𝕏 account that traders who swapped tokens through the wallet app prior to 2024 were also eligible.

As teased by Pudgy Penguins CEO Luca Netz in an exclusive interview with SolanaFloor, Jupiter stakers may have been eligible for an allocation. According to the Diligence DAO Airdrop Checker, the largest $JUP staker is eligible to claim over 200,000 $PENGU tokens.

Solana Saga owners also received generous allocations, with some users reporting allocations of ~26,000 $PENGU tokens.

Pudgy Penguins Claim API Overwhelmed by Demand

As is often the case during high-profile airdrops, the $PENGU claim site struggled to provide timely service to users. With millions of wallets swarming the official site, the $PENGU claim API was overwhelmed by demand, resulting in widespread outages and failed transactions.

Chef, Chief Creative and Partner at Pudgy Penguins, revealed that the $PENGU claim site witnessed over 4.7M hits and suffered DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) issues, suggesting attackers may have tried to overwhelm the site to reduce claim flow and dump their tokens ahead of other recipients.

Other claimants reported discrepancies between the allocations they were promised on the site and the number of tokens they received. 

However, these concerns were alleviated when Clusters founder foobar informed frustrated claimants that this discrepancy was due to transaction size limits.

Snipers Rekt

Sniper bots hoping to secure large holdings of $PENGU at launch suffered devastating losses. Before the official launch, a small amount of liquidity was added onchain trading pools, prompting automated trading tools to fire large sums of money into exceptionally thin liquidity.

This caused $PENGU price to spike dramatically in the minutes before launch, hitting over $140 per token and reaching a market capitalization of over $14T.

One sniper mistimed their entry poorly, swapping over 45 $SOL for a mere 78 $PENGU tokens, valued at less than $5.

With $PENGU now alive and kicking on the Solana blockchain, Pudgy Penguins now turns its attention back to growing the brand and preparing for the launch of Abstract, its native consumer-focused Layer-2. In time, $PENGU will be a bridgable asset between Solana, Ethereum, and Abstract.

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[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nskqVxZbT6I]