Moonbirds rebounded strongly after changing owners. Can they replicate the success path of Fat Penguin?

Author: Nancy, PANews

In recent days, the popularity of small pictures has been rekindled, and the NFT market has ushered in a long-awaited general rise. After a period of dormancy, the old blue-chip NFT Moonbirds has rebounded strongly after completing a new round of ownership changes. Behind this is not only the recovery of the overall sentiment of the crypto market, but also the assistance of new narratives and community reconstruction.

Moonbirds' floor price rebounded sharply, and the new owner OCG became the key driver of recovery

The NFT market has heated up recently, and the once-dormant old project Moonbirds has returned to the public eye.

NFT Price Floor data shows that as of July 22, the floor price of Moonbirds reached 1.55 ETH, a new high since December 2023. Although Moonbirds is still in a broken state, its trading activity has quickly recovered. In the past week, its transaction volume ranked fifth among all NFTs, making it one of the most concerned IPs in the market.

The "rebirth" of Moonbirds is inseparable from a key turning point: the change of ownership of P. On May 31 this year, Orange Cap Games (OCG), a blockchain game development studio, announced that it would acquire Moonbirds, Mythics, and Oddities from Yuga Labs and plan to incorporate them into its Web3 game ecosystem.

Since OCG took over, Moonbirds' trading volume has increased dramatically, and the floor price has soared by more than 437.9%. During the acquisition by Yuga Labs, it was almost stagnant, the floor price had long hovered around 0.3 ETH, and the trading volume fell to the tip of the iceberg of the early peak.

As for the reason for the acquisition, OCG CEO Spencer once revealed in an interview with NFT NOW that in addition to knowing Yuga Labs co-founder Garga for a long time, he believes that Moonbirds is an IP with a story, which has experienced twists and turns but still has cultural value and community-based IP potential. Despite the complex history of the project, the users who stayed represent real cohesion, and Moonbirds' unreleased high-quality art resources and brand assets provide a good foundation for the restart.

After taking over Moonbirds, Spencer served as project leader and quickly defined a new strategy, focusing on reactivating the community, expanding the platform, and future product and IP development.

Spencer said that Moonbirds' primary goal is to reactivate the community. Although the community was very active in the past, it declined significantly during the Yuga acquisition period, and some members chose to fade out or fall silent. Reuniting the community is the basis of all plans, because without the support of internal stakeholders, any ecological expansion is out of the question.

While reshaping the community, Moonbirds is also simultaneously advancing its platform expansion plan, but the overall rhythm is significantly different from the previous peak period. At present, they have officially launched the Telegram announcement channel and launched a daily crypto newsletter through the official website, continuing to push industry trends and project updates to community users. They plan to expand to Instagram, Giphy, TikTok and YouTube and other broader social platforms to get rid of the limitations of over-reliance on X and achieve multi-dimensional exposure and IP reach of the brand. At the same time, Spencer also revealed that the team is also developing new products internally, and it is expected that collectible collectibles will be launched in the next few months. Although it has not yet been determined whether the trading card game (TCG) will be the main form, it is hoped that these products will demonstrate the potential of the Moonbirds ecosystem.

In addition, Spencer also emphasized the open IP route of Moonbirds. They welcome other developers or publishers to use Moonbirds IP, but the premise is that they must follow strict quality standards. This means that Moonbirds will not be limited to the content developed by OCG itself, but will become an ecological platform for external construction.

From the actual delivery, Moonbirds' transformation has shown phased results. According to Spencer's disclosure, within 51 days after OCG took over, Moonbirds topped the Ethereum NFT transaction volume list for 5 consecutive days. At the same time, Moonbirds received airdrops from the social application Towns and free Pokémon cards; OpenSea's official Twitter account changed to Moonbirds' avatar; the established Telegram announcement channel attracted more than 25,000 people to join; $1.4 million was invested in the Moonbirds Telegram sticker lottery; completed a $350,000 financing led by 1kx, hired new team members and will soon be officially announced. He also recently revealed that Moonbirds has finalized three collaborations (2 large and 1 medium).

Replicating the success path of the fat penguin? Attention and cash flow are the survival philosophy of NFT

After Moonbirds was acquired by OCG, the community's expectations were greatly increased, and this change was mainly due to the studio's capital resources and business execution capabilities.

OCG is a game and experience design studio dedicated to bringing IP into reality. Spencer, the helmsman behind it, is an early blue-chip player in NFT and has earned hundreds of times the profit with projects such as BAYC and Cool Cats. At the same time, Spencer is also the founder of NFT venture capital Spencer Ventures, and he bought hundreds of fat penguin NFTs at the bankruptcy auction of Three Arrows Capital in 2023. This also successfully laid the foundation for the in-depth cooperation between OCG and Pudgy Penguins.

In September 2024, OCG announced that it had received a US$2 million angel round of financing. Investors included Pudgy Penguins' parent company Igloo, Web3 consulting firm Pacific Meta, Kyber Network founder Loi Luu, and NFT giant dingaling.

Later, OCG launched a new collectible card game Vibes featuring the Pudgy Penguins IP, which introduced more than 200 licensed fat penguin images into online and offline TCG games. It has sold more than 4 million cards in total, and physical sales alone have generated more than $1.5 million in revenue. This also demonstrates OCG's ability to successfully transform NFTs from digital collections to touchable and experiential IPs. As the cooperation deepens, OCG's interaction with Pudgy Penguins has become closer, including Spencer's appearance at the Nasdaq opening bell ceremony with Pudgy Penguins this year.

 Note: Spencer is the second from the left

Shortly after the official announcement of the acquisition of Moonbirds, OCG announced in June this year that it had received $3.5 million in seed round financing, with investors including 1kx, Yuga Labs and IVC. Among them, 1kx was also a key force in supporting Pudgy Penguins in the early stage, and this investment was also seen by the community as a signal of ecological synergy.

For this reason, from strategic model, capital injection to ecological construction, Moonbirds' current development path is also believed by the outside world to replicate the successful model of Pudgy Penguins.

Although it is still unknown whether Moonbirds can return to its former glory, in Spencer's view, the first rule of the crypto world is to survive. Many NFT projects cannot survive because they are unable to maintain basic operations due to the depletion of funds. Only by maintaining a stable cash flow and profit margin can the continued vitality of the project be ensured. OCG ensures steady growth in revenue by continuously holding brand events and product sales. Secondly, NFT projects should pursue both attention and cash flow. If they only pursue one of them, they will end up empty-handed. An ideal product can not only shape brand influence, but also achieve considerable revenue.