In Brief:
- On Oct. 17, Pudgy Penguins PENGU $0.008303 ▼ -8.7% will stage Pengu Blooming Shanghai inside a historic 1990s Shanghai salon, teaming up with @deepcoincn, @cbid_io, @JoinProxima and Figurobot.
- Organizers must approve each attendee, capacity is limited, and only registered guests can see the exact address.
- The gathering coincides with a scheduled unlock of roughly 723 million PENGU and takes place 11 days after Igloo announced it would shut down Abstract.
Shanghai is the next stop for Pudgy Penguins’ community gatherings. The project has scheduled its Pengu Blooming Shanghai meetup for Oct. 17, to be held in a salon in the city dating back to the 1990s.
The project announced the event on X: “Pudgy Penguins are coming to Shanghai!” it wrote. “Join the Huddle on October 17th for Pengu Blooming Shanghai, alongside @deepcoincn, @cbid_io, @JoinProxima, and Figurobot as we take over a historic 1990s Shanghai salon.”
Pudgy Penguins are coming to Shanghai!
Join the Huddle on October 17th for Pengu Blooming Shanghai, alongside @deepcoincn, @cbid_io, @JoinProxima, and Figurobot as we take over a historic 1990s Shanghai salon.
RSVP and more information below.Pudgy PenguinsView on X ↗
Approval required
On the event page, Pudgy Penguins is named as the presenter and Symphony Young as the host. The meetup also goes by a Chinese title, 繁花上海.
Spots are limited, and every registration has to be approved. Only registered guests can see where the venue is. At the time of writing, nine people had signed up through the event page.
Guests can expect live jazz and a chance to network, bringing Pudgy Penguins holders together with the local community. Shanghai-themed photo backdrops are planned, and attendees can collect stamps to exchange for merchandise while supplies last.
The event page sums up the organizers’ pitch: “Breaking the ice worldwide, Pudgy Penguins events are in a league of their own.”
Token release on the same day
Oct. 17 is also the date of a scheduled PENGU token release, with about 723 million PENGU set to go to the team and the company.
Based on recent prices, that tranche is worth roughly $6.3 million, or a little more than 1% of the circulating supply.
In the days leading up to the event, PENGU was trading around $0.008.
Abstract wind-down
The Shanghai meetup comes shortly after Igloo Inc., the company that owns Pudgy Penguins, said it would shut down Abstract, its Ethereum layer 2, on Dec. 15. Igloo confirmed the decision on Oct. 6 and said Abstract’s funding and staff would be moved over to Pudgy Penguins and PENGU.
According to Igloo CEO Luca Netz, the company bankrolled Abstract for about 18 months and lost tens of millions of dollars along the way. The chain, he said, never found product-market fit.
Users have been told to get their funds off the network before the deadline, either through Abstract’s Migration Hub or its native bridge, which has a three-hour delay. Any assets left on the chain after Dec. 15 risk becoming permanently unreachable.
Igloo chose not to pour more money from the Pudgy Penguins business into keeping Abstract alive, and it also ruled out issuing a token to fund the chain.
Netz addressed that choice in a post on X: “Even after losing 8 figures, we could have launched a token or pursued an ICO. Ultimately we decided against this.”
Built on ZKsync’s ZK Stack, Abstract went live on mainnet on Jan. 27, 2025. The network reported more than 325 million transactions, about 4 million wallets and $6 billion in decentralized exchange volume. Its shutdown makes it the second Ethereum-linked layer 2 to announce a closure in under a week, after Blast made its decision on Oct. 2.
Asia push
The Shanghai meetup follows the Pengu World Tour’s Seoul stop, which ran Sept. 28 to Oct. 2 alongside Korea Blockchain Week.
Pudgy Penguins also works with LINE FRIENDS, the character brand that operates stores in Seoul, Tokyo and Shanghai.
The brand has held events in mainland China before. Last year, its Pengu Asia Tour China Edition made stops in Shanghai, Hangzhou and Shenzhen between Oct. 25 and 29.
The organizers describe the Shanghai event in one line: “From online PFPs to real-life friendships, we’re bringing the huddle closer together, one city at a time.”