CryptoPunks was created by Larva Labs, a two-person studio that is involved in various other projects, including mobile games, utilities, web infrastructure, digital design, and art.[1] According to the Larva Labs team, CryptoPunks was inspired by the London punk scene, the cyberpunk movement, and Daft Punk. Each CryptoPunk can exhibit a combination of 87 unique traits, including hats, cigarettes, necklaces, earrings, eyepatches, and more.[2]
CryptoPunks were freely claimable by any holder with an Ethereum wallet at launch, with the user paying only the associated Ethereum gas fee. Today, they can be traded via a marketplace on the CryptoPunks website. Several auction houses, including Christie’s, are known to have sold CryptoPunks pieces.[3]
In March 2022, Yuga Labs, the studio behind Bored Ape Yacht Club, acquired CryptoPunks and Meebits from Larva Labs.[2]
Founders
Larva Labs created CryptoPunks, a collection of 10,000 digital characters generated by a software program. Larva Labs was started by Matt Hall and John Watkinson, two Canadian software developers.[2][4]
Matt Hall is a software engineer who has worked on various projects outside of CryptoPunks, including co-founding the Choon music platform and developing apps on iOS and Android. He has worked for Google, Microsoft, and other tech companies for over twenty years.[5]
John Watkinson is a Creative Technologist at Google and a Partner at Larva Labs. He is also the Founder of Docracy.[6]
CryptoPunks started as an experiment in 2017 by Hall and Watkinson, who created a software program that generated 10,000 unique, pixelated characters.[7] They initially thought they might develop a smartphone app or game. According to the team, the project was inspired by the London punk scenes, the cyberpunk movement, and the electronic music artists Daft Punk.[8]
Launch
The collection was launched on June 23, 2017. Larva Labs initially offered the NFTs for free to any holder of an Ethereum wallet. Despite the slow start, with just twenty to thirty CryptoPunks claimed in the first few days following launch, the collection quickly garnered attention after Mashable published an article about the collection. It took just a few hours after the publication was released for all available NFTs to be claimed. The initial adoption of CryptoPunks came from a small community of blockchain enthusiasts who were able to acquire their CryptoPunks by only paying the Ethereum gas fees required.[9]
Larva Labs retained 1,000 of the 10,000 NFTs; the remaining 9,000 were fully claimed.[1]
Post Launch
In February 2017, a bug was discovered in the project’s smart contract. The bug allowed buyers to purchase and claim a CryptoPunk without actually transferring ETH to the sellers. As a result, many of the original CryptoPunks V1 NFTs were stolen. Larva Labs created a new smart contract to fix the bug, replacing CryptoPunks V1 with a V2 version.
In January 2022, several members of the CryptoPunks community created a “wrapper” program that turned the discontinued V1 NFTs into new NFTs that were able to be traded separately from the official CryptoPunks V2 collection. The bugs in the original smart contract were fixed, making it possible to resell the V1 NFTs on platforms such as OpenSea.[10][11]
In February 2022, Larva Labs faced backlash when the team wrapped and sold several V1 Punks that it owned. The team is reported to have made about $622,000 worth of ETH at the time from selling off its V1 Punks.[21] Days after the sale, Larva Labs tweeted that CryptoPunks V1 was not “official” CryptoPunks and attempted to get them blacklisted and removed from NFT marketplaces. The denouncement resulted in a drop in CryptoPunks V1 prices, which also resulted in financial loss for those who had purchased V1 NFTs from Larva Labs.[2]
In March 2022, Yuga Labs, the creator of Bored Ape Yacht Club, acquired the CryptoPunks and Meebits NFT collections from Larva Labs. With the acquisition, the Yuga Labs team announced that it would transfer intellectual property, along with commercial and exclusive licensing rights to CryptoPunks NFT holders, similar to what Yuga Labs did with the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection.[2][12]
In November 2022, Yuga Labs launched the Punks Legacy Project with the goal of displaying CryptoPunks NFTs in museums and design institutes worldwide.[13]
In December 2022, Punk DAO was established as the governance collective for CryptoPunks. According to its official website, Punk DAO aims to “support, collect, invest, and engage with different creators and founders in the crypto ecosystem.”[14]
In June 2023, Yuga Labs announced a collaboration with Zak Group, a design office focusing on identity and creative direction for people, institutions and brands, to create the official documentation of CryptoPunks in one catalog. Pre-sales will begin in 2023, with the finished book set to release thereafter.[21]
Reception
Various celebrities, including Jay-Z, Serena Williams, Odell Beckham Jr., and Marshmello, are known to be holders of CryptoPunks.[10]
In May 2021, Christie's auctioned off the first nine CryptoPunks for $16.9 million. This was the second-largest NFT transaction at the time, trailing behind Beeple's $69 million sale in March 2021. The NFT pieces to be auctioned off originally belonged to the Larva Labs team.[15][16]
Another auction house, Sotheby’s, followed Christie’s move with a CryptoPunks auction in June 2021. During the auction, an Alien CryptoPunk with a COVID Mask (#7523) was sold for $11.8 million. Sotheby's soon announced another auction in response to the growing interest in CryptoPunks.[17]
In August 2021, Larva Labs signed a representation agreement with United Talent Agency. The agreement encompassed various fields, such as film, TV, video games, publishing, and licensing.[18]
