Popular NFT project Pudgy Penguins has announced the next phase of the project’s development: Pudgy World. Pudgy World is a Web3 game powered by the Ethereum Layer 2 network zkSync Era, which the company describes as an “immersive digital environment.”
Pudgy Penguins’ announcement comes at a time when the project has been particularly successful. The lowest price for the NFT has nearly doubled in the past two weeks, according to data from Opensea, and the brand recently launched the toy in 2,000 Walmart stores nationwide. That’s slightly less than half of the company’s more than 4,000 locations in the United States.
Pudgy World’s alpha is open to all gamers, but Pudgy NFT holders and Pudgy Toy buyers will receive unique perks within the game’s virtual world. Details about gameplay are currently scarce, but the company describes two “heroic characters”, Pudgy and Peaches, who will “guide players through the adventure that awaits them.” Both characters appear in the game’s animated launch trailer.
NFT holders will also benefit from other people purchasing products related to the gaming ecosystem through royalties, the company announced. Notably, the project’s original founders proposed creating a metaverse game, but were ousted after the Pudgy Penguins community decided they had not kept their promises.
For zkSync, Pudgy Penguins chose a layer 2 network “because it is the first zkEVM capable of scaling Ethereum to a million developers and a billion users and the fastest proof system in production,” according to the company. “zkSync… is the only chain that can support and strengthen the success of Pudgy World and the Pudgy community in introducing blockchain technology to the next generation of mobile gamers.”
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