Pudgy Penguins Firm Raises $11 Million for Ethereum Layer-2 Push

Igloo, Inc, the parent company of popular NFT brand Pudgy Penguins, has raised over $11 million in funding to develop a new Ethereum layer-2 scaling network called Abstract, the company announced Tuesday.

The funding round was led by Founders Fund, with additional investments from Fenbushi Capital, 1kx, Everest Ventures Group, and Selini Capital.

Igloo will use the funds to establish Cube Labs, a new venture that will oversee the development of Abstract, an Ethereum layer-2 network. In June, Igloo announced the acquisition of Frame, an NFT-centric layer-2 network, with plans to have that team contribute to Abstract.

“While building Pudgy Penguins, we’ve come to the unfortunate truth that current L2s are not built for the consumer crypto revolution,” Igloo Inc. CEO Luca Netz tweeted last month. “This acquisition allows us to address these challenges head-on and create an ecosystem that supports and enhances the consumer crypto experience.”

Igloo Inc. says that Abstract, which will soon launch its testnet, is designed to make building decentralized apps (dapps) easier, cheaper, and safer using zero-knowledge cryptography.

“Our vision is to change the dynamic of how users interact with blockchain technology and easily merge both the real and digital worlds,” said Netz, in a release.

Pudgy Penguins was launched in the heart of the 2021 NFT bull run, but the original team lost community support in the months that followed.

Netz and team acquired the project IP in 2022 and rebuilt it into a consumer brand, including with toys that launched last year and have expanded into retailers like Walmart and Target. Now, Pudgy Penguins is one of the most valuable NFT projects around, with its original Ethereum profile pictures (PFPs) starting at a price higher than the Bored Ape Yacht Club.

Editor’s note: This article was written with the assistance of AI. Edited and fact-checked by Andrew Hayward.