Have you ever asked what CryptoPunks are? Well, let’s explain.
CryptoPunks are pieces of crypto art collectibles, which are on the Ethereum blockchain.
In total, there are 10,000 small punks with 8-bit-style, which all have their unique features.
Altogether these primarily famous NFT projects have inspired tons of crypto artists including the event of the ERC-721 token standard designed for digital collectibles.
The Cryptopunk project became more popular in 2021
What are cryptopunks?
These small, pixelated faces in tiny squares don’t look any special when you look at it at first glance.
While some are smoking pipes, others are wearing hats, some even look like aliens. But when it involves NFTs, looks are often deceiving.
For the fact that you own one among these funny-looking punks, it could probably buy you anything you want: from a little apartment to buying a huge mansion.
These CryptoPunks are a set of NFTs that are in huge demand currently around the world.
These punks don’t fight, stake, or do anything.
CryptoPunks happens to be one of the primary NFT projects that have existed.
Who created cryptopunks?
John Watkinson and Matt Hall of Larva Labs created Cryptopunks.
Ultimately, in order to help popularize crypto art which we all know today as NFTs, Larva Labs began the Cryptopunk project in 2017 as an experiment into the world of NFTs and art.
NFTs are a kind of cryptocurrency but are quite different from Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency you know.
There are 3840 female and 6039 male Cryptopunks.
There’s even a couple of apes, aliens, and zombies within the mix of these punks.
All 10,000 of them are unique because of the combination of their mixed attributes.
Surprisingly, these punks were initially available and distributed free of charge.
All you had to do was pay the associated Ethereum transaction fee.
Today, it is no news that the popularity of these artworks has tremendously skyrocketed since then, alongside NFTs generally.
A firm known as Christie’s is auctioning off collections with estimates that run into the millions.
NFTs today is money
In March 2021, the pale-looking alien punk with a headscarf is the highest-selling CryptoPunk.
It is worth 4200 ETH, which is around $7.58million among others.
CryptoPunk #7804, is the second highest selling NFT worth $7.57 million in March 2021.
The difference is because of the rise in Ethereum (ETH) prices.
So far, when you look at the NFTs market, In terms of NFTs generally, these two CryptoPunks are the first and second-costliest non-fungible tokens ever sold.
How do they work?
The ERC-721 token protocol used for NFTs was never in existence when the CryptoPunk project was launched.
The creators of Larva Labs had to figure out what they had: which was ERC-20.
Going by a punk fashion, this team of creators ended up modifying the ERC-20 code only enough to supply non-fungible items, which was acting as an idea for the ERC-721 development shortly after.
The authenticity of every CryptoPunk can be determined by hashing its reference image and comparing it to a selected image hash that is within the token’s contract.
Larva Labs proceeded to create a composite image that contains all 10,000 punks because these punk images were too large to be stored on the blockchain.
All of the hashes are often present within the CryptoPunks token contract.
So the next question will be how does one know which one you’ve got is the right CryptoPunk?
Well, each punk’s token contains metadata that refers to its position within the composite image.
Where can I buy cryptopunks?
Apart from Larva Labs designing the CryptoPunks themselves, they also went ahead and created their marketplace on the CryptoPunks website where users make bids, buy, and sell CryptoPunks.
All you need to do to interact with the marketplace is by installing and connecting your MetaMask.
CryptoPunks is not only available on their website, they have also made their way into OpenSea, which is considered as the number one NFT marketplace on Ethereum.
CryptoPunks are a touch different things altogether and they have been wrapped into ERC-721 tokens so that people can be able to trade them in the NFT marketplace.
It is often easy for an ERC-721 CryptoPunk to be converted back to its original ERC-20.
The processes involved in wrapping and unwrapping these punks happens on Wrapped PUNKS and it is done with a MetaMask wallet containing a CryptoPunk.
Wrapping it up
CryptoPunks is just one occasion amongst others where pioneers in pure artistic value on the blockchain are creating art although they are not unique when it involves NFTs when compared to CryptoKitties, which has elements of gamification.
Critically analyzing these punks, each individual punk is nothing quite an easy image.
With massive popularity and the number of projects directly inspired by CryptoPunks, that’s why it’s still topping the NFTs marketplace.
