Huddle of Fud

Penguin #4407 | fishing for yield | mostly under water 🌊

[Jonathan Nash @offshoot3D]

Could you imagine a cartoon with these guys? #pudgypenguins

[Emperor Osmo 🐂 🎯 @Flowslikeosmo]

Here are the Top Stablecoin Yields paid out over the past month:

1. sUSDS ( @SkyEcosystem) $18.6m
2. syrupUSDC ( @maplefinance) $6.1m
3. BUIDL ( @Securitize) $5.7m
4. USYC ( @circle) $5.5m
5. USDY ( @OndoFinance) $3.2m

The Clarity ACT's potential ban on idle capital will be a catalyst for onchain stablecoin yields.

Data: @stablewatchHQ

[Huddle of Fud @HuddleOfFUD]

I finally got around to reading this. Great RWA framework.

[Maria 🐸 @MariaShen]

We mapped 501 sources of real-world yield in traditional finance.

Only 34 have any meaningful on-chain presence.

We break down:
- what keeps the other 467 off-chain
- why distribution is the biggest bottleneck
- what needs to be built to bring them on

[Huddle of Fud @HuddleOfFUD]

While diversification across crypto hasn’t really held up when BTC dips, I see it differently when it comes to diversifying across vaults during stress events like this one.. Some curators did a pretty good job in terms of mitigation.

[Tindorr 🌯 @0xTindorr]

I thought I had everything under control in the Resolv USR exploit, but the damage still exceeded my expectations.

Decided to share lessons that almost ruined my DeFi farming portfolio:

— 1. Big-name curators won't save you

Putting a larger allocation into a vault just because Gauntlet is the curator is a fatal mistake.

What happened to Gauntlet's Morpho vaults disappointed me. Their automated rebalancing bots kept supplying USDC into a broken market after the exploit was already known.

The systems designed to manage risk were actively making losses worse.

Don't trust what they project on their profiles. Verify how they actually manage capital.

— 2. Diversifying across black-box vaults is a mistake

If the vault you deposit into claims to diversify across yield strategies, depositing into another vault with a similar approach doesn't reduce risk.

It concentrates it.

wstUSR and RLP were embedded across Morpho vaults, Fluid, Venus Flux, and Euler. When the domino fell, contagion hit 15+ vaults and multiple lending markets because they were all feeding from the same well.

In this bear market, there aren't that many opportunities. The underlying positions likely overlap.

— 3. When something breaks, check everything immediately

I was one of the first to see this exploit unfold. And I just left for the gym, thinking the damage was already done.

That was wrong. There was a window where USR was trading at $0.15-$0.40 on DEXs but hadn't been paused on some platforms yet. Opportunistic borrowers exploited that gap to post depegged collateral and drain stablecoins.

Had I mapped my full exposure immediately, I could have withdrawn from Venus Flux before they paused withdrawals instead of spending the rest of the day worrying about how operators would fill the hole.

When a stablecoin depegs, don't assume the blast radius is contained. Track every integration point.

— 4. Crisis response reveals who deserves your trust

This incident exposed flaws in protocols I assumed were safe. Venus Flux, for example. I deposited three weeks ago and hadn't tracked what collateral they whitelisted since.

But Fluid's team stood out. Facing $15M+ in bad debt and $300M+ in outflows (their worst single day ever), they moved really fast by:

> Secured short-term loans to cover 100% of the bad debt
> Announced it publicly
> Committed to making every user whole

All within 24 hours.

Can't ask for much more from a team in crisis. However, whitelisting criteria for new collateral assets needs to be much tighter.

I got lucky and dodged the worst this time. But the next exploit won't send a warning. Still much more to learn to survive consistently in this market.

[Eli Ben-Sasson | Starknet.io @EliBenSasson]

Crypto Winter reflections

I've been in crypto since 2013, so quite a few years by now.
I co-founded @Zcash, then moved on and co-founded @StarkWareLtd. In short, I've been here for a while.

By now I've passed quite a few winters, so many, that I've stopped counting. I do notice that different winters have different flavor to them and I remember the last crypto winter.

The one word I associate the most with the last crypto winter is SCAMs. Between the crash of Luna, 3Arrows Capital, and the cherry on the top – FTX, that winter was brought about by over-wild speculation and unethical conduct.

In contrast, the current crypto winter feels very different to me. The phrase I use is TradFi Bear Hug.

By this I mean that with the election of Trump and the warm embrace of regulators and large TradFi players of crypto, it seemed for a while that crypto found its destination: to become the new money, new financial rails, new infrastructure for doing all the stuff that Wall Street has been doing so far.

But what actually happened is that this Bear Hug crowded out the true spirit of crypto, which is about Freedom of Economic Enterprise. This type of freedom means doing all sorts of wild, fun, crazy, new things that in TradFi world are reserved to the Fat Cats, and some of which are not even dared to be done by them.

So, we find ourselves in a weird winter, marked by the smothering of the spirit of freedom by the big bear hug of TradFi. At the same time, there's a vacuum and lack of leadership.

But change is on the way, I can smell it. It's Freedom.

[Paul Frambot 🦋 @PaulFrambot]

Morpho's active loan market share has reached another all-time high, driven primarily by organic, sustainable stablecoin-denominated demand.

[Huddle of Fud @HuddleOfFUD]

Definitely worth a read. Recent events warrant a closer look at curators’ capital allocation vs. risk management

[Chaos Labs @chaoslabs]

https://t.co/rZBlGCOabb

[Chaos Labs @chaoslabs]

https://t.co/rZBlGCOabb

[Huddle of Fud @HuddleOfFUD]

good deep dive on Sky’s underlying yield sources (and its complexity)

[Vadym @vadymnx]

https://t.co/XiIYaxM6Xl

[Bright Avian | True Pengu King & Hand of Neo Tokyo @BrightAvian]

Lemme start this off by saying that I have become complacent last year about @pudgypenguins.

In the early phases of the takeover it was pretty clear to me that @LucaNetz and team needed a strong community that is rallying behind them here on CT to make this thing work. At least half of the NFT space hated on penguins for various reasons and never fully accepted them as one of the blue chip NFTs – which however made the huddle hold together and push even harder. Yes, as captured on a VIBES TCG card, Luca did in fact save the Penguins. But long before that the penguin community turned themselves and our beloved penguin NFTs into something that is genuinely cherished by many worth saving ... and before anyone came along to save the penguins, the community fought and rioted and tried hard to save themselves. This is how we got here in the first place. It is also how we made it into a NYT article or raised huge amounts for charity with an auction by @EtheriaChan that featured @cobie, @Cryptopathic, and @loomdart.

Fast forward, these old times seem long forgotten in 2026 – just one page in the endless encyclopedia of pengu lore. Luca and team building on the foundation created by the community (as well as the old team and especially the original artist who by a stroke of genius or luck or sheer talent drew this simple, yet captivating and impressive, art, that, we all fell in love with) did a fantastic job. Penguins are seen, liked, and shared on Instagram by couples and people across the globe. Toys made it to Walmart and into the homes of many kids that never even heard the word NFT. Everything felt like smooth sailing now, aside from some envious haters or the occasional – sadly not atypical – PvP between NFT communities, most people were championing penguin now, while many of the former big blue chips died. Everything seemed almost perfect – lean back and enjoy the ride, praise the team for their good work, like & share the new releases and updates, and proliferate the penguin (?!).

Well ... in that seemingly perfect smooth ride lies a silent danger. Looking outside projects are dying left and right, meanwhile penguins doing well, good stuff happening. Yeah there might be hiccups, some frustrations, maybe even some true problems ... but things are going much better than elsewhere ... by a landslide ... would be ungrateful to speak up. Just shut up and enjoy the ride ... penghalla is coming!

Now ... this creates two big problems:

First, we've turned from a community that was very outspoken, constantly sharing feedback, critique, and rioted so hard that we made the old founders leave and sell the project into a seemingly positive yes-men culture that mostly just praised and amplified the work of the team and swallowed most frustrations for a long time now. It is super commendable that the Inner Igloos are still ran without much of any miss on a bi-weekly basis and in theory they offer a good opportunity for feedback (as they did very well in the past). But, while it's exciting how much they grew in listeners, that causes two issues: (1) There is lots of potential input but very limited time and hence it is close to impossible for everyone to speak up or share their thoughts and – imho even more importantly – (2) the vibe changed a lot; it turned from a cozy campfire chat where one could spitball ideas and openly voice concerns and critique as well as constructive feedback to much more of an update session and people expressing gratitude and excitement. This is only natural as the numbers grew, but there has never really been a proper alternative way that found much usage. There are kinda both sides to blame for that. We as the community never really asked for one and the team side failed to recognize that was has been around did not really live up to the task. As such, lots of unheard feedback & frustrations piled up and the disconnect between the community and the team feels somehow larger than ever (kinda excluding Pudgy Asia from that where @FoxyPenguinApe does a fantastic job with especially IRL events & community, but I believe that even in that region similar issues still exist for the CT / "only online" audience). This is very sad to see, because the community and the team being in a strong interlock was one of the superpowers of @pudgypenguins – as stated by @LucaNetz: "you all are the brain, we are the muscle".
I do not believe that this general idea and vision changed, but in the last year it has not been working remotely as well as it used too. Sure growing pains and all, but it is a crucial loss and deepens the feeling of disconnect which is dangerous.

Two ... "Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times (Hopf)". The penguin community, molded in FUD and constantly fighting back in 2021 and 2022, had some of the most impressive and relentless energy ever. Instead of accepting the downfall of the project we constantly pushed forward against all odds – overcoming all obstacles somehow. A lot of this carried over into the bear market and early phases of the 2024/2025 bull market and then slowly fell off. No more fights, smooth sailing, winning. I think this also in parts happened on the team side as well.

On the CT community side we saw less and less spaces, less viral stuff, less pengposting (not in total, community grew, resourced grew, but we literally took over CT back in 2021 with a tiny crowd of people; now more and more of us became complacent). It is still good, better than most, but the direction is wrong.

On the team side I can only speculate. But it feels like sometimes too much was put on the plate. Smooth sailing and winning can create over-optimism and a bit of hubris. Also having all eyes and attention on one's thing makes it sadly easy to occasionally being taken advantage off in various ways. Combine that with the unfortunate yes-men culture that arose and you get a fairly dangerous combination.

Things are still seemingly going very well for now and maybe it is just a feeling of a penguin obsessed random guy, but aside from the obvious bear market some things are not going in an upward direction and need to see a shift and turnaround before they start affecting the broader picture more severely.

I've playfully, but only half jokingly, posted about that internship role (which I would be actually down for @LucaNetz) because I do think there needs to be something done about the feeling of disconnect that has arisen as the brand and company scaled, but I have no idea yet if that will go somewhere.

However ... we can JUST DO THINGS (thanks to @MINHxDYNASTY for the quote and inspiration) and that is exactly what we used to do in the @pudgypenguins community.

It's time to properly lock in again for me. And it's time to lock in again fellow penguins. Now I may have put "True Pengu King" in my Twitter name many years ago because I am retardedly obsessed with penguins (not only the pudgy ones) but a king is nothing on his own and a good king should be a servant of his people ... eh penguins.

So for now, if this post sparked any thoughts in you or you have general thoughts, ideas you wanna bounce, frustrations that bother you or anhing else that you wanna vent about, discuss or ideate on feel free to shoot me DMs or book a call with me (calendly in reply below so algo does not punish this post). I'm back to being terminally online this year so I'll make sure to get back to you quickly. I'll also do my best to aggerate and condense any inputs and feedback you all have and will try to push it through to the team in some way (no promises here, but hopeful) and worst case you at least will have an extra place to vent.

While it is awesome to see how the fanbase of the penguin is growing all over the globe, I believe its success is hampered if the core is rotten. So let's all together bring the CT huddle back to its former glory fellow penguins – in honor of our lost pengu brother Elmo.

[Pudgy Penguins @pudgypenguins]

$PENGU is now live and tradable in New York on @coinbase

[Luca Netz 🐧✳️ @LucaNetz]

Enter Pudgy World, the first look into the Pudgy Penguins universe.

A massive bridge between web2 & web3.

[Pudgy Penguins @pudgypenguins]

We’re excited to announce that Pudgy World, our free to play browser-based game, is now live.

Explore 12 unique towns across The Berg, help Pengu find Polly, and play mini-games, all on @PudgyWorld_.

Play now: https://t.co/x7lkMt8Rre

[Pudgy Penguins @pudgypenguins]

Tomorrow @PudgyWorld_

[Pudgy Penguins @pudgypenguins]

Pengu Morning 🐧

[Coinbase Singapore 🛡️ @CoinbaseSG]

Happy Chinese New Year, Singapore! 🧧

On the first day of CNY, Pudgy found a golden treasure. What could it be?

→ Follow @CoinbaseSG @PudgySG @BaseinSG
→ RT + comment answer

5 winners each win one CNY Coinbase Pudgy plushie. 1 winner from the entire giveaway win S$888 BTC.

[Pudgy Penguins @pudgypenguins]

Pengu spotted at the NY Toy Fair 👀

[Pudgy Penguins @pudgypenguins]

👀

[Chef @chefgoyardi]

Pudgy shop pushing almost $50k/day in sales.

Ad spend sitting at 15x ROAS. Organic CVR is almost 6% alone.

Pudgy Penguins fundamentals are hard to refute.

[OpenSea @opensea]

gm

Walking into the week with some lofi beats and the crew. 🎧