CryptoPunks

CryptoPunks is a collection of 10,000 unique 24-by-24 pixel-art characters recorded on the Ethereum blockchain. It was released in June 2017 by Larva Labs, a studio founded by Matt Hall and John Watkinson, and is widely regarded as one of the first non-fungible token (NFT) projects. The characters, mostly human figures drawn in the style of early video games, with randomly generated hats, hairstyles, glasses and other attributes, were originally given away free to anyone with an Ethereum wallet, apart from network fees.

CryptoPunks became a cultural symbol of the NFT boom of 2021, when individual Punks sold for millions of dollars and were used as social media profile pictures by investors and celebrities, a practice described under profile picture NFT. The collection's design and contract helped inspire the ERC-721 standard used by most later NFTs. Ownership of the brand and intellectual property has changed hands twice since its launch.

CryptoPunks are like a set of 10,000 numbered collector's cards, each with a small cartoon face, except that the "cards" exist as records on a blockchain. Whoever's wallet address is listed next to a Punk's number owns it, and anyone can check that list on a blockchain explorer.

The pictures themselves are simple and anyone can copy them, but only one person can own the official record for each one. In 2017 almost nobody cared; they were free to claim. A few years later, the earliest days of the NFT craze made them famous, and owning one became a status symbol, much like owning a rare stamp or a first-edition comic.

Larva Labs launched CryptoPunks in June 2017, and all 10,000 were claimed within days. Because the project predated today's NFT standards, it used a custom smart contract that included its own built-in marketplace. A flaw in the original contract's marketplace led Larva Labs to deploy a corrected version shortly after launch; Punks in the earlier contract, known as V1 Punks, later attracted their own market. Interest grew as NFTs became popular in 2021. In March 2022, Yuga Labs, creator of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, acquired the CryptoPunks and Meebits intellectual property from Larva Labs and later gave owners commercial rights to their characters. In 2025 Yuga Labs transferred the CryptoPunks intellectual property to the Infinite Node Foundation, a non-profit organisation set up to preserve and promote digital art.

• Fixed supply. There are exactly 10,000 Punks, numbered 0 to 9,999, and no more can be created.
• Traits. Each Punk has a type, most commonly male or female, with much rarer zombies, apes and aliens, plus a combination of accessories. Rarer types and traits command higher prices.
• On-chain ownership. The original contract records who owns each Punk; a separate on-chain image of the whole set was later added, so the artwork itself is verifiable on Ethereum.
• Wrapping. Because the original contract is not ERC-721, owners often "wrap" Punks in a compatible contract to trade them on general marketplaces.

CryptoPunks have been among the most valuable NFT collections by total sales. Several alien Punks sold for thousands of ether during 2021 and 2022, with the highest sales worth more than $20 million at the time. In 2021, the auction house Christie's sold a set of nine Punks for nearly $17 million, and Visa bought a Punk to add to its collection of commerce artefacts. Prices fell sharply in the 2022 crypto winter along with the wider NFT market. Like other NFTs, Punks are traded mostly in ether, so their dollar value moves with the price of Ethereum (ETH).

Critics have questioned the value of owning a record pointing to an image anyone can copy, and have pointed to wash trading and speculative bubbles in the NFT market, including a 2021 transaction in which a Punk was apparently sold to its owner's own address using a flash loan, inflating its headline price. Others note that a few holders own many Punks, giving them outsized influence on prices. Supporters see CryptoPunks as a historically important work of digital art and an early demonstration of verifiable digital ownership, discussed further under NFT use cases.

• CryptoPunks