What is CryptoPunks?
CryptoPunks is the first widely used collection of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). What does it entail? What makes it so popular? Let’s find out!
It is made up of 10,000 NFTs that were distributed on the Ethereum blockchain in 2017.
One of the reasons for the NFT sphere’s growing popularity was the hype surrounding CryptoPunks.
Each pixel art piece depicts a portrait of a person, a monkey, a zombie, or an alien.
One NFT in the collection is worth at least 61 ETH (approximately $173,000), and the total trading volume of CryptoPunks tokens is $1.96 billion.
Who created CryptoPunks ?
Larva Labs, a company founded by Matthew Hall and John Watkinson, is the collection’s author.
Initially, the NFT project’s authors were working on a program to generate avatars automatically. They decided to use it to create digital objects in blockchain on the spur of the moment in the summer of 2017.
CryptoPunks was inspired by the aesthetics of the British punk movement of the 70s and works in the cyberpunk genre, such as the movie “Razorblade Runner” and the novel “Neuromancer”.
These were not the first NFTs, but they became a cultural phenomenon and gained widespread popularity. Following the project’s launch, the company opened a marketplace for token trading on its website and added analytical tools for the collection.
How was CryptoPunks created?
There was no ERC-721 token standard at the time the collection was created, which is now popular for creating digital items. As a result, the developers altered the ERC-20 standard by creating tokens that were not identical to one another.
The developers did not intend to store images on the blockchain at first because image files take up a lot of space. Larva Labs put a composite image containing all the avatars on their website.
The authenticity of the NFT can be verified after it has been processed. The resulting data must match the hash contained in the smart contract of the non-fungible token.
Each portrait has its own ordinal number that corresponds to its position in the overall “picture,” which has 100 avatars in length and 100 in width. For example, avatar #7610 is the 10th image in line 76.
When the collection was mined, the developers actually gave away 9,000 of the 10,000 tokens — NFT only needed to pay a commission on the Ethereum network, which covered the cost of its release.
How are CryptoPunks images different?
All portraits are classified into several types. The first contains images of both sexes. This is the largest group, with thousands of tokens. Portraits of zombies, monkeys, and aliens are far less common. These three groups contain only about a hundred images in total.
The developers used dozens of different traits to make the characters unique when creating the portraits. Almost all of them have a distinct set of characteristics. There are 87 different hairstyles, beards, hats, glasses, smoking pipes, and other accessories to choose from.
A character may have no more than seven attributes. Only one portrait, number 8348, has the maximum number of attributes.
Most of the images have two or three attributes. Avatars that do not have unique attributes are called Genesis Punks.
The CryptoPunks catalog with detailed information about each image and its attributes, as well as a list of transactions of tokens associated with them, is published on the Larva Labs website.
Why is the price of NFT CryptoPunks so high?
The most expensive “cryptopunk” was sold in February 2022: avatar #5822 was purchased for 8,000 ETH (more than $23 million at the time of the deal). The owner of NFT was the head of Chain, Deepak Thapliyal.
The cheapest token in the CryptoPunks collection is valued at more than $170,000. The high value of these NFTs is due to a number of factors.
First, historical significance: this collection has become a real cultural phenomenon, is at the origins of digital art, and its items have become “classics”.
Second, owning CryptoPunks is prestigious: each NFT is a recognized and unique art object, which allows a wealthy individual to stand out.
Furthermore, the tokens provide some benefits, most notably invitations to closed groups and chats. There was also an airdrop of tokens from the Meebits collection, also issued by Larva Labs, among NFT CryptoPunks owners.
CryptoPunks’ value is influenced by recognition from leading auction houses. Nine tokens from the collection were auctioned off at Christie’s in May 2021.
The project has also piqued the interest of major investors, with Visa purchasing one of the avatars in August 2021. CryptoPunks’ owners include celebrities such as musician Jay-Z and tennis player Serena Williams.
What factors influence the price of an individual NFT CryptoPunks?
Each avatar’s worth is determined by its type and attributes.
Images of aliens are the rarest and thus the most expensive. The average cost of such an NFT is more than a hundred times that of an avatar depicting a human male. Portraits of monkeys and zombies are also highly valued due to their scarcity.
The cost of characters is also determined by the number of attributes they have. Avatars have the highest value, whether they have no distinguishing features or have the most of them (six or seven). The price is also affected by the characters’ “accessories” as rare “items” can be found among them.
How is CryptoPunks evolving?
In August 2021, Larva Labs placed images from the CryptoPunks collection on the Ethereum blockchain at the request of collectors who wanted to increase the preservation of NFTs.
In the spring of 2021, Larva Labs released Meebits, a new collection of 20,000 NFTs. The images were also created automatically with software and in a pixel-art style, but this time with voxels (volumetric pixels). Meebits tokens are ERC-721 compliant and issued on the Ethereum network.
In March 2022, Yuga Labs, which created another popular collection of digital items, the Bored Ape Yacht Club, acquired the rights to CryptoPunks and Meebits. It received 423 “cryptopunks.” as part of the deal.
There are new art projects based on the legendary collection. FlamingoDAO, for example, created three-dimensional models of CryptoPunks characters and intends to use them in meta universes.
What are your thoughts? If you have anything to add to the Cryptopunks topic, please leave your comments below!
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