What Are CryptoPunks: A quick overview

Smita Verma
3 min readJun 7, 2021

These minuscule, pixelated faces in tiny squares don’t appear to be very distinctive at first glance. Some are smoking pipes. Others are wearing hats. Some of them are even extraterrestrials. When it comes to NFTs, though, appearances may be misleading.

You could definitely purchase everything from a tiny apartment to a large house just by possessing one of these goofy-looking punks. These 8-bit-style CryptoPunks are a collection of NFTs that are now in high demand and are limited to 10,000 copies. They don’t fight, stake, or do anything other than act like little punks. CryptoPunks is also one of the earliest NFT projects that have been created.

Who came up with the concept of CryptoPunks?

CryptoPunks is the idea of Matt Hall and John Watkinson, who created Larva Labs in New York. The initiative began in 2017 as a test of the value of NFTs and art, and it has since helped to promote what is now known as crypto art.

They are a form of cryptocurrency, however, they are not the same as Bitcoin or Binance Coin. On the Ethereum blockchain, each of the 10,000 punks is a unique NFT. There are 3840 females and 6039 males in this group. There are also some apes, aliens, and zombies in the mix.

Each of the 10,000 is completely unique thanks to a mixture of diverse characteristics.

Initially, the punks were available and distributed for free. To obtain one, all you had to do was pay the relevant Ethereum transaction cost.

Since then, the popularity of these artworks, as well as NFTs in general, has surged. Christie’s auction house is even selling collections with estimated values in the millions of dollars.

How do CryptoPunks work?

The ERC-721 token protocol, which is presently utilized for NFTs, did not exist at the time of the project’s introduction. Larva Labs had no choice but to work with what they had: the ERC-20 protocol.

The team ended up changing the ERC-20 code just enough to generate non-fungible goods in a punk way, which served as motivation for the development of the ERC-721 shortly after.

By hashing each CryptoPunk’s reference picture and comparing it to a certain image hash in the token’s contract, you can confirm its legitimacy.

Larva Labs generated a composite image featuring all 10,000 punks since the photographs are too huge to be kept on the blockchain. The CryptoPunks token contract contains a hash of this.

Where to buy NFT crypto?

Larva Labs built its own store on the CryptoPunks website in addition to developing the CryptoPunks. Users may place bids, purchase, and sell CryptoPunks there. By installing and linking your MetaMask, you may engage with the marketplace.

CryptoPunks have also made their way onto OpenSea, a popular Ethereum-based NFT marketplace. These pixel punks, on the other hand, are a little different. They’ve been wrapped in ERC-721 tokens and may now be traded on NFT exchanges.

It’s simple to convert an ERC-721 CryptoPunk back to its original ERC-20 format. Wrapped PUNKS are wrapped and unwrapped, and this may be done with a MetaMask wallet that contains a CryptoPunk.

Wrapping up

CryptoPunks were once pioneers in sheer creative value on the blockchain technology, albeit they are no longer unique when it comes to best nft crypto. Each punk is nothing more than a basic picture, unlike CryptoKitties, which contains gamification aspects. The amount of projects directly inspired by CryptoPunks demonstrates their enduring popularity.

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