10 things to know about CryptoPunks, the original NFTs | Christie's

The CryptoPunks are a collection of 24x24, 8-bit-style pixel art images of misfits and eccentrics. 

There are exactly 10,000 of them, each with their own ostensible personality and unique combination of distinctive, randomly generated features.

To Hall and Watkinson, there was a raucous, anti-establishment spirit to the early days of the blockchain movement. It was a vibe they wanted to reflect in the look of their Punks.

‘The London punk movement of the 1970s felt like the right aesthetic.’ The dystopian grit of cyberpunk as typified by the film Blade Runner and William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer, was also an influence.

There’s a composite image of all 10,000 CryptoPunks on Larva Labs’ website. 

• Anyone can save a copy of the image file to their memory stick or hard drive. 
• Each Punk also has its own page, detailing its special features and complete transaction history.

Official ownership of each work is publicly accessible on the Ethereum blockchain. The ownership history of each artwork is tracked and documented in the blockchain.

• The record, as Larva Labs explained to Christie’s, ‘is incorruptible and promises to be extraordinarily long-lived. 

As well as the human CryptoPunks, Hall and Watkinson — with a nod to popular culture archetypes — tweaked their software algorithms to generate a scarcer number of fantastical, non-human works, adding 88 green-skinned zombie Punks, 24 hirsute ape Punks and nine light-blue-skinned alien Punks to the series.

Like their human counterparts, the non-human Punks have different combinations of accessories: one alien is smoking a pipe, for example, and has been dubbed the ‘wise alien’.

• ‘The core of the idea was that every character should be unique,’ says Larva Labs.

In accordance with the nature of blockchain, once the project went live, Larva Labs couldn’t alter the existing series, even if they wanted to. ‘It’s odd to think of what might have been different if we had run the generator just one more time, or used the penultimate run’s output.’ 

The creators regard each work as individual pieces of generative art, while allowing that the entire project itself might be thought of as a larger conceptual piece. ‘It’s possibly the first work of art with a self-contained mechanism for recording and transacting its ownership.’

Once minted, Hall and Watkinson offered the CryptoPunks for free, not forgetting to claim 1,000 for themselves, 'just in case it becomes a thing,' as Hall put it. 

At first, there was very little interest, but after a while, Punks were selling for thousands of dollars.

As of early April 2021, over 8,000 sales had been recorded in the previous 12 months, with an average sale price of 15.45 ether ($30,412.40). The total value of all sales is 127,360 ether ($251,620,000) — and that value grows daily.

In February, CryptoPunk 6965, a fedora-wearing ape Punk, sold for 800 ether — equivalent to $1.5 million. And on 11 March 2021, CryptoPunk 7804, the previously mentioned pipe-smoking ‘wise alien,’ was sold for the equivalent of $7.5 million — the highest amount ever paid for a Punk at the time. The record was beaten the next day.

Larva Labs’ set comprises nine CryptoPunks, all from their original collection, in a single lot that highlights the series’ best features: muttonchops, earrings, big shades, crazy hair, a hoodie, a mohawk and more.

• 24 x 24 pixels each, 9 'CryptoPunks' total. Estimate: $7,000,000-9,000,0000. Offered in 21st Century Evening Sale on 11 May at Christie’s in New York