Pudgy Penguins Launches TON Blockchain Game, Pengu Clash

Pudgy Penguins, the popular NFT collection project, is launching a skill-based Web3 game called Pengu Clash for The Open Network (TON) blockchain. This marks the company’s entry into the competitive mini-game space.

The game operates under a play-to-win model, rewarding players for game mastery rather than speculation. “Play-to-win, in essence, is a skill-based game,” Pudgy Penguins CEO Luca Netz told Cointelegraph.

Unlike play-to-earn games that reward tradable currency, Pengu Clash features user-vs-user challenges with different game modes and objectives. “Users wager against one another,” Netz explained.

The project chose the TON blockchain due to Telegram’s large user base and potential for growth. “Most platforms aren’t positioned for this type of gameplay,” Netz noted.

Netz emphasized that expanding to the Telegram ecosystem is strategic: “This is an opportunity to reach a whole different user base than we’ve had access to in the past, including users from Northern Europe.”

Pudgy Penguins, launched in 2021 as an Ethereum-based NFT collection of 8,888 unique cartoon penguins, has a market cap of nearly $200 million as of June 17, 2024. CEO Netz stated the game is part of a planned IP expansion, with commercial gains considered secondary to brand growth.

The Decline of Telegram’s TON Blockchain Ecosystem

While Telegram’s Mini App ecosystem remains exclusively on TON, the network has seen a sharp decline in monthly active wallets, dropping 82.3% since October 2024 to under 8 million. Despite this, the blockchain continues to process approximately 19,500 daily transactions.

Despite recent activity declines, Telegram games reached their peak in 2024 with projects like Hamster Kombat attracting hundreds of thousands of players.