Looking for Cats? See the Awesome CryptoKitties Bubble (Anno 2017) »

Someday, owning a CryptoPunk might signify just how early of an adopter you were into the world of blockchain and its thriving digital art scene. Or, they could just be a bunch of [24×24 pixel] images.

-- June 2017

There will be a desire and need to buy expensive [status symbols] in the digital realm [to "flex" how rich and stupid I am]. What could be more desirable than a small [24×24] pixelated [knitted cap-wearing ape] face? CryptoPunk artwork [ #8219] just sold for $176,000.

-- January 2021

Ultra-rare alien [24×24 pixel] CryptoPunk sells for 605 ETH, or $750,000. The investment thesis. "Aliens are the rarest form of CryptoPunk and we believe that the acquired Alien [ #2890, one of nine] will be prized by collectors over time and mature into an iconic digital art piece."

-- January 2021

CryptoPunks are the Warhols of the digital age.

-- February 2021

10 000 CryptoPunks, ≈13 500 Picasso paintings. Do the math.

-- February 2021

CryptoPunks, [Ethereum Edition] are truly priceless - the rookie cards of [digital collectibles] ("non-fungible tokens").

-- Mark Cuban, Billionaire, February 2021

Our darling [CryptoPunks, Polkadot Edition] ("SubstraPunks") are going to be flying out to a [digital collectible] ("non-fungible token") exhibition in Beijing and Shanghai next month!

-- Substra Punkette, Feburary 2021

REMINDER: In the digitial world there are no originals! Every copy is a original and you cannot tell the difference (all 0s and 1s are the same). And, yes, you can always make as many (free) copies as you like (in a free world). Claiming that you can protect your exclusive rights to pixels because the record of ownership is stored in a public database is absurd. Without laws and governments that help you with your rights - the claim is just a meaningless series of 0s and 1s. PS: Do you really own CryptoPunks? (Spoiler: No.) Check your license agreement with LarvaLabs - the pixel art license seller - and do NOT get fooled by the record of ownership. You are a licensee and NOT an owner.

Warning: There is a project called [CryptoPunks, Binance Edition] ("Binance Punks") that has taken the art from CryptoPunks and is selling it as a copy on another blockchain. This is in no way an authorized [Larva Labs] project.

-- February 2021

Isn't an unauthorized edition the true authentic punk edition? Fuck the [Larva Labs $$$] hipsters and the [let's "flex" how rich and stupid I am] 24×24 pixel certified proof-of-ownership HODLers!

-- Anonymous Punk

Awesome CryptoPunks Bubble (Anno 2021) - Modern 24×24 Pixel Crypto Art on the Blockchain

CryptoPunks, Ethereum Edition

10 000 unique collectible characters with proof of ownership stored on the ethereum blockchain.

SPOILER: You can download all 10 000 CryptoPunks in a 2400×2400 image (~ 830kb) for free. See punks.png ». Yes, the originals¹!

¹: On the blockchain only the punk index (e.g. 2890, 8219, and so on) as an integer number gets stored - and one time only the "Don't Trust, Verify" SHA256 hash of the all-10 000-punks-in-one image in the contract code ».

Q: What is a CryptoPunk?

The CryptoPunks are 24×24 pixel art images, generated algorithmically. Most are punky-looking guys and girls, but there are a few rarer types mixed in: Apes, Zombies and even the odd Alien. Every punk has their own profile page that shows their attributes as well as their ownership & for-sale status.

Q: Who's behind CryptoPunk?

Matt Hall and John Watkinson from Larva Labs in New York City, United States

We're coming up on two years of the CryptoPunks launch. We thought CryptoPunks might be just a blog post, a couple weeks of interest and the end of it - and it's still going strong.

-- Matt Hall (April, 2019)

Q: How were the punk images created?

With a generator that was programmed to generate punks with a range of features and rarity. For example, there are only 88 Zombie Punks, 24 Apes, 9 Aliens and exactly 1 Alien Punk smoking a pipe.

Q: Is the 24×24 Pixel Art Image stored on the blockchain?

The actual images of the punks are too large to store on the blockchain, so we took a hash of the composite image of all the punks and embeded it into the contract. You can verify that the punks being managed by the ethereum contract are the True Official Genuine CryptoPunks™ by calculating an SHA256 hash on the cryptopunks image (punks.png - 2400x2400 - ~830kb) and comparing it to the hash stored in the contract.

Q: What about the CryptoPunks Contract?

See Inside the CryptoPunksMarket Blockchain Contract / Service »

Types & Accessories

Alien update: There are currently 3 open bids against aliens totaling 1 876 ETH (~$2.46M USD). -- Jan 26, 2021

Punk Types (5)

Accessories (87)

Accessory Count (0 to 7)

(Source: CryptoPunks Types and Attributes)

More

Wrapped CryptoPunks (WPUNKS)

437 punks are "wrapped" as "standardized" non-fungible tokens (ERC-721) for sale on markets, see Wrapped Punks for more.

Markets include:

• Wrapped CryptoPunks @ OpenSea

What about the Wrapped CryptoPunks (WPUNKS) contract?

See Inside the Wrapped CryptoPunks (WPUNKS) Blockchain Contract / Service »

CryptoPunk, the Shell Version

The cryptopunk command line tool lets you mint your own 24×24 pixel punk images off chain from the True Official Genuine CryptoPunks™ sha256-verified original 10 000 unique character collection (in your shell terminal); incl. 2x/4x/8x zoom for bigger sizes

To use the punk (or cryptopunk) command line tool. Try:

$ punk -h

resulting in:

Usage: cryptopunk [options] IDs
  Mint punk characters from composite (./punks.png) - for IDs use 0 to 9999

  Options:
    -z, --zoom=ZOOM   Zoom factor x2, x4, x8, etc. (default: 1)
    -d, --dir=DIR     Output directory (default: .)
    -f, --file=FILE   True Official Genuine CryptoPunks™ image (default: ./punks.png)
    -h, --help        Prints this help

Let's mint punk #2890 and #8219:

$ punk 2890 8219

printing:

==> reading >./punks.png<...
     >ac39af4793119ee46bbff351d8cb6b5f23da60222126add4268e261199a2921b< SHA256 hash matching
         ✓ True Official Genuine CryptoPunks™ verified
==> (1/2) minting punk #2890; writing to >./punk-2890.png<...
==> (2/2) minting punk #8219; writing to >./punk-8219.png<...

And voila!

Find out more @ Crypto Punks, the Shell Version »

cryptopunks.csv - All 10 000 CryptoPunks by ID with Type, Accessories & More

(Crypto) punks dataset in comma-separated values (CSV) format in blocks of a thousand punks each (e.g. 0-999.csv, 1000-1999.csv, 2000-2999.csv, and so on). The data records for punks incl. id, type, count (of accessories), and accessories. Example:

id, type, count, accessories
0, Female, 3, Green Eye Shadow / Earring / Blonde Bob
1, Male, 2, Smile / Mohawk
2, Female, 1, Wild Hair
3, Male, 3, Wild Hair / Nerd Glasses / Pipe
4, Male, 4, Big Shades / Wild Hair / Earring / Goat
5, Female, 3, Purple Eye Shadow / Half Shaved / Earring
...

Find out more @ cryptopunks.csv »

CryptoPunks Picasso Style (Generated with Pix2Pix A.I.)

Artonymous Artikfakt writes:

Playing around trying to generate some CryptoPunks [Picasso Style] with A.I. (artificial intelligence) using Pix2Pix [- a creative machine learning algorithm that turns a crude line drawing into an oil painting]. These are all regenerated from the training set. Just did a quick test and will try to train it further over night. Lets see how it goes.

(Source: CryptoPunks Picasso Style, Artonymous Artikfakt)

Famous CryptoPunks Look-Alikes

famouspunks.com - a website dedicated to matching CryptoPunks with their celebrity lookalikes. You can find pretty decent matches for Hulk Hogan, John Waters, and, if you're being generous, Katy Perry in her blue hair days.

Remakes

CryptoPunks, Polkadot Edition ("SubstraPunks")

In 2020, the devs created the artist - okay fine, the algo - who drew the Substrapunks, as an homage to Cryptopunks.

The team didn't expect their hackathon project to have any value. Just like cryptopunks - they gave them away to anyone who claimed one. It took a while. Not many people believed, and even fewer people expected them to ever be worth anything!

Soon, people started buying and selling them - there was no market. Someone made an online spreadsheet page to keep track of prices & trades - that was v1 of the marketplace! No one really knew the value of different traits - most were available for a few dollars, but some were already 3 figures.

-- Substra Punkette, Hello World! The Story So Far, January 2021

CryptoPunks, Polkadot Edition ("SubstraPunks") is a remake on the Polkadot blockchain - contracts built with the Substra(te) machinery - by Alexander Mitrovich & Greg Zaitsev, Usetech, Moscow, Russia.

10 000 unique character images are generated from a brand new set of face parts.

Punk images are auto-generated from 8 parts. Some of them are optional (like a beard or cigar), some are required (like the face). Some are uni-sex (like earrings or noserings), but some define the gender of the generated character (like lipstick or blonde hair for girls or a beard for boys). If the gender is not determined, the chance decides what it is going to be at the moment when they are generated. The component parts are:

1. Face (2 options: black and white)
2. Beard, optional (7 options)
3. Earrings, optional (3 options)
4. Eyes/sunglasses (5 options)
5. Hair (12 options)
6. Mouth (6 options)
7. Nose ring, optional (1 option)
8. Cigar or a pipe, optional

The total combinations possible are 89 820, but the algorithm randomly picked 10 000 of them.

I think a $1,000 USD price floor for Punks is going to happen, and probably this year.

It sounds crazy, but that's 2.5 KSM per punk, and a KSM price of $400.

Actually that sounds bearish! Considering punks have gone from 0.05 KSM to 1 KSM and Kusama (KSM) from $5 USD to $275 USD.

Some updated market stats:

• Total sales: 1352.23 KSM
• Average price: 1.435488323
• Highest Price: 75

Approx. $3 million USD total market cap

-- Substra Punkette, February 2021

Find the open source code on github @ usetech-llc/substrapunks. (Note: includes the art generation algorithm / code).

Copypasta - Original or Copy? Cash Grab or Conceptual Art?

Good artists copy, great artists steal. -- Pablo Picasso

CryptoPunks, Binance Edition ("Bunks")

Warning: There is a project called [CryptoPunks, Binance Edition] ("Binance Punks") that has taken the art from CryptoPunks and is selling it as a copy on another blockchain. This is in no way an authorized [Larva Labs] project.

-- February 2021

Isn't an unauthorized edition the true authentic punk edition? Fuck the [Larva Labs $$$] hipsters!

-- Anonymous Punk

Why Binance Punks exists:

The initial crypto punks distribution was free to claim punks. This made it so that a few early non-fungible token (NFT) fans had all the fun and have made millions. Now people are more aware of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). We want to give everyone on Binance Smart Chain (BSC) a chance to be a part.

To buy a Crypto Punk costs $42,000 and to buy a Binance Punk costs $300. Punks for the people.

This growth is insanity. Extremely unexpected. The winners have been selected! These punks sold out way faster than expected.

In two hours we sold 10,000 bunks for $2.5 million.

-- February 2021

• BinancePunksMarket Contract (incl. Source Code) @ 0x5EA899dBc8d3CDE806142a955806e06759B05fB8

Updates:

We are embracing the [Bunks] meme. Our site is now hosted at bunks.on.fleek.co

-- February 2021

Bunk #3100: Alien (1 of 9) just sold for $48,000.

-- March 2021

Find out more @ bunks.on.fleek.co »

History

CryptoPunk is one of the first "Non-Fungible Token" and was an inspiration for the Ethereum ERC-721 non-fungible token standard that today powers most crypto art and collectibles on the blockchain.

How much did the punks cost when first released? You could claim a punk (for "free") that is, by simply paying the transaction fee of around 11 cents. Now, you have to buy a punk from someone else and need to pay the market rate.

With the CryptoPunks, where we gave away 9,000 of them, a large number of them went to a few early people that just got on it and automated that process. -- Matt Hall (April 2019)

Genesis Story

CryptoPunks started with a pixel-art character generator Watkinson began playing with in December 2016. It randomly mixed a selection of characteristics (sunglasses, skin colors, hair types, and so on) to come up with 10,000 24-by-24-pixel "punks" - a characterization that nods to the early '90s cypherpunks, cofounded by the late Timothy May. None look exactly alike, and certain types of punks turned out to be rarer than others.

[..]

"We muddled our way through figuring out how an ERC-20 token would look if it were not fungible," said Hall. After many attempts, they settled on putting the hash of each CryptoPunk's image file into its respective smart contract, including some "marketplace functions" that would allow people to buy and sell the Punks. They posted their project to the Ethereum subreddit and Hacker News and waited for people to notice. Very few did. About 100 claimed a Punk, which Hall and Watkinson offered for free.

Then, in June 2017, the pair got in touch with Mashable and told them about CryptoPunks. "This Ethereum-based project could change how we think about digital art," read the headline above an image of a blond, glasses-wearing Punk with the caption, "Someone owns this picture."

"Things went crazy," said Hall. "We went from having something like 8,600 CryptoPunks available to within 20 hours, they were all claimed." The pair had already reserved 1,000 for themselves "just in case it becomes a thing."

Watkinson got in on the action. The day the Punks exploded, he sold one of his for a dollar. Someone bought it, so he sold another for $10. That sold, too, so he went up to $50, then $100. That same day, someone offered an alien Punk for 10 ether, which at the time was $3,000. "Boom, someone bought that," said Watkinson. "I was just like, whoaaa. The day before that, we were like, will anyone care?"

(Source: How CryptoPunks' Creators Charmed the Art World and Paved the Way for Blockchain Art by Jessica Klein, Breaker Mag, January 2019)

Articles

• This ethereum-based project could change how we think about digital art - Someone owns this picture. by Jason Abbruzzese, Mashable, June 2017

• A Physical Model for Digital Art Ownership - The CryptoPunks in their First Gallery Show. by Larva Labs, February 2019

• CryptoPunks Two Year Anniversary - A look at the activity and trends over the first two years of the CryptoPunks. by Larva Labs, June 2019

• An Ethereum-based CryptoPunk Artwork Just Sold for $176,000. Owning a pixelated avatar of a knitted cap-wearing ape is a status symbol, argues the user who paid thousands for it. by Liam Frost, Decrypt, January 2021

• Ultra-rare alien CryptoPunk sells for 605 ETH, or $750,000. Is the market getting overheated? by Andrew Thurman, Coin Telegraph, January 2021

Stats

Sales Stats

• Number of Sales (Last 12 Months): 4 641
• Average Sale Price (Last 12 Months): 5.60 ETH (~$9 621)
• Total Value of All Sales (Lifetime): 25 990 ETH (~$45million)

Contract Stats

The [CryptoPunksMarket] contract now holds 4,095 ETH (~$5.4M USD) in open bids and pending withdrawals. -- Jan 26, 2021