Awesome

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

Someday, owning a Matt & John's® punk V2 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? Matt & John's® punk artwork [ #8219] just sold for $176,000.

-- January 2021

Ultra-rare alien [24×24 pixel] Matt & John's® punk V2 sells for 605 ETH, or $750,000. The investment thesis. "Aliens are the rarest form of Matt & John's® punk 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

Matt & John's® punks are the Warhols® of the digital age.

-- February 2021

10 000 Matt & John's® Punks V2, ≈13 500 Picasso® paintings. Do the math.

-- February 2021

Matt & John's® Punks V2, [Ethereum Edition] are truly priceless - the rookie cards of [digital collectibles] ("non-fungible tokens").

-- Mark Cuban, Billionaire, February 2021

Our darling [Punks, 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 Matt & John's® Punks V2? (Spoiler: No.) Check your license agreement with the LarvaLabs Crypto Bros - 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 [Punks, Binance Edition] ("Binance Punks") that has taken the art from Matt & John's® Punks V2 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

Breaking News - Larva Labs Sending Out Copyright Violation Takedowns - How Punk is That?

Subject: Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) Takedown <br> Date July 1, 2021 at 10:51

My name is Mordecai Goldstein and I am the General Counsel of Larva Labs LLC [- a multi-million dollar crypto fraudster operator]. A [digital pixel] image [sold via an unauthorized token] on your site is infringing on the copyright/intellectual property owned by our company.

The original [24×24 8-bit pixel] images [that any 6-year old can redraw "by hand" in minutes¹], to which we own exclusive copyrights, can be found at http://larvalabs.com/cryptopunks [on the permission-less decentralized unstoppable undeletable blockchain - see the CryptoPunksData contract²].

The unauthorized and infringing ["punk"] copy can be found at: ...

[...] I seek the removal of the aforementioned infringing material from your servers and take down of the site. I request that you immediately notify the infringer of this notice and inform them of their duty to remove the infringing material immediately, and notify to cease any further posting of infringing material to your service in the future. [...]

Thank you, <br> General Consel, Larva Labs LLC

[¹: Yes, you can! Draw your own free 24×24 avatars that you own 100% forever. Try the Punk's Not Dead Pixel Drawing Tool online.]

[²: Yes, of course - the Larva Labs Crypto Bros uploaded all assets in August 2021 to send a message to the world. Don't ever think about stealing our exclusive pixel art!]

Aside: Color By Number Books for Kids (Age 3 And Up)

Let's look at the claim that 24×24 pixel punk images are copyrightable artworks (and not some computer-generated images) or as the "Chief Matt & John's® Punks (V2) Brand-Officer/Leader" Noah Davis (formely at Christie's - see Punk It! Truly Historic (Con-)Art Sale. 104 Punks. 1 Lot.) likes to say - modern fine art portraits (kind of a new primitive fauve style).

Can a kid age 3 and up copy (paint) Henri Matisse's "Woman with a Hat", in minutes? How about a million dollar alien pixel punk?

The blurb of the Color by Number for Kids: Pixel Art Coloring Book for Kids Ages 3 and Up, Colorful Play Paperback ($6.99) - see above the cover with a 28x42 pixel artwork - reads:

Every page is a surprise. Featuring full-page drawings of space, astronauts, animals, flowers, insects, natures, cars, princess and more! Provides hours of fun and creativity. These fun coloring pages will help children (Ages 3-8) master their numbers and improve their manual dexterity through coloring. Suitable for age 3 and up, Children will have fun matching the colors to the included color key, or making up their own color combinations.

Yes, let's repeat - suitable for age 3 and up!

Discuss: Can you copyright computer-generated pixel images? Or How "Original" Is a 24×24 Pixel Image in 8-Bit Colors That Any 6-Year 3-Year Old Can Redraw "By Hand" In Minutes? A Punk Clown Nose is a 2×2 Square of Red Pixels? A Punk Smile (Mouth Expression/Emotion) is a Single Black Pixel? A Punk Frown (Mouth Expression/Emotion) is .. guess how many pixels? And so on.

Awesome Matt & John's® Punks Bubble (Anno 2021) - Modern 24×24 Pixel Crypto Art on the Blockchain

Matt & John's® Punks (formerly CryptoPunks), Ethereum Edition

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

SPOILER: You can download all 10 000 right-facing punks in a 2400×2400 image (~ 830kb) for free. See punks.png ». Yes, the originals¹! Or for something more punk try the 10 000 left-facing Phunks. See phunks.png ».

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 Matt & John's® Punks (V2)?

The Matt & John's® punks (formerly known under the generic term/word/category "Crypto Punks") are 24×24 pixel art images, generated algorithmically. Most are right-facing punky-looking guys and girls, but there are a few rarer types mixed in: Apes, Zombies and even the odd Alien. Every Matt & John's® punk has their own profile page at the Larva Labs Crypto bros' website that shows their attributes as well as their "ownership" & for-sale status.

Q: Who are the con-art fraudsters and crypto bros' behind Matt & John's® Punks?

Matt Hall (b. 1974, Dundas, Canada) and John Watkinson (b. 1975, Thunder Bay, Canada) - two Canadians who grew up in Ontario and studied computer science majors at the University of Toronto - moved to New York in 1999 and nowadays (years later) the two-man team behind Larva Labs in New York City, United States.

John Watkinson was the driver of the pixel punks' look, adding wacky hair, pipes, and hats. He figured the aesthetic would resonate with crypto enthusiasts.

We're coming up on two years of the Matt & John's® punks launch. We thought Matt & John's® punks (formerly known under the generic term/word/category "Crypto Punks") 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)

Matt and John co-founded Larva Labs in 2005 and describe it on LinkedIn as

a product studio, consulting company, and home for our wide range of experiments ... including large scale web infrastructure, genomics analysis software, an art project on the blockchain.

Matt and John both studied computer science at the University of Toronto, Canada. John also went on to get a PhD in Electrical Engineering and Genetics at Columbia University, New York City, United States.

They both co-founded Docracy, "the largest open-source repository of legal documents on the web" in September of 2011, which was later acquired by eversign.

At one point they tried to launch a legal-documents startup, but they failed to raise the needed money.

Larva Labs was founded to create applications for the T-Mobile sidekick phone (remember that one?).

According to LinkedIn, they wrote over fifty apps including best-selling ones.

According to LinkedIn, both Matt and John also work in Google's creative lab.

In 2011 they coded an app for Google called Androidify, which let people customize the company's green Android mascot into a personal avatar by selecting its skin tone, clothing, and accessories. The app was a surprise hit, and for a while fans of Google's operating system used the avatars as their profile pictures on Twitter.

Through that app and others, Watkinson and Hall developed a nostalgic look, rooted in the limited graphics of the computers they grew up with—simple, cartoonish shapes with clean lines and bright colors that seem to belong nowhere more than on a screen.

(Quotes from The 10,000 [Pixel Punk] Faces That Launched an Non-Fungible [Art] Token Revolution, Wired, November 2021)

Q: How were the punk images created?

In the beginning it as just a 24×24 pixel Photoshop file with a whole bunch of layers... Once that was working we switched to a code based generator. At first it just randomly selected some stuff to put on the head and then as we went further it got more complicated. Eventually we had an Excel spreadsheet where you could put rules in to define which traits don't work together, and the expected rarities for each type and trait. For example, Aliens were supposed to be on average 10 out of 10,000 and there ended up being nine.

-- John Watkinson from LarvaLabs during the Charleston CryptoPunk Meetup 2023.

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.

John Watkinson had been working on designing a set of digital cards that were compelling enough to be worth collecting. He made some basic heads, along with accessories to layer over them, and then worked away at a piece of software - the "generator" in the generative art - that could compose thousands of unique but plausible faces. Loosely inspired by his experience with Androidify, Watkinson played around with the characters' looks, adding hair styles, pipes, hats. He zeroed in on a punky look, which he felt resonated with crypto enthusiasts' defiant bent. "I liked that it was very counterculture and sort of funky and kind of flying in the face of the establishment," Watkinson says.

(Quotes from The 10,000 [Pixel Punk] Faces That Launched an Non-Fungible [Art] Token Revolution, Wired, November 2021)

Matt & John's® Punks Trivia: Did you know - the 10 000 pixel art punk images in the 24×24 format get computer-generated from about a hundred building blocks (male face 1, crazy hair, clown nose, smile, etc.)

Punks (Male 1/2/3/4 + Zombie/Ape/Alien + 63 Attributes)

Punk(ette)s (Female 1/2/3/4 + 59 Attributes)

Yes, that's all the magic (and pixel art) of the billion dollar bitmap (2400×2400px) that houses all 10 000 (computer-generated) punks in the Matt & John's® series (V2)!

Bonus: In 2x zoom (48×48) <br>

Note: Since August 2021 the building block "assets" (e.g. male face 1, crazy hair, clown nose, smile, etc.) are now officially stored "on-chain". See Inside the CryptoPunksData Contract - All 133 Assets (11 Archetypes 'n' 122 Attributes) in the 24x24px Format For Easy (Re)Use "Off-Chain".

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 Matt & John's® punks V2 by calculating an SHA256 hash on the punks image (punks.png - 2400x2400 - ~830kb) and comparing it to the hash stored in the contract.

When the generator was nearly finished, John Watkinson joined Matt Hall in figuring out how to write the basics of a marketplace into their [Ethereum] contract, so that people could buy and sell punks.

The biggest issue was getting their wares onto the Ethereum blockchain. If they uploaded each face individually, the transaction fees would be far too high. This was a problem. If the images weren't themselves on the blockchain, would anyone believe they owned a Matt & John's® punk? John Watkinson and Matt Hall decided to go with an imperfect solution: a hash. They fed a composite image of all the punks - the grid of 10,000 [pixel punk] faces - into a hashing algorithm called SHA-256, which cranked out a 64-digit [hash] signature. Matt Hall tucked the number into their [Ethereum] contract. If anyone tried to tamper with the master image (by, say, transforming the pyrite of a stringy-haired goatee guy into the gold of an alien), a skeptic could double-check the image by running it through that algorithm. Only the original image, with every pixel precisely intact, would generate the [hash] signature.

(Quotes from The 10,000 [Pixel Punk] Faces That Launched an Non-Fungible [Art] Token Revolution, Wired, November 2021)

Update August 2021 - Breaking news from LarvaLabs (Matt Hall and John Watkinson ) the original Matt & John's® punk devs:

The Matt & John's® punks (formerly known under the generic term/word/category "Crypto Punks") are now fully on chain! The images and attributes are now stored in the CryptoPunksData contract. Read more in the On-chain Matt & John's® punks article.

Note: The transaction (gas cost) fee for the contract creation is 0.08749 ETH (~$261.30) PLUS 266 follow-up transactions - each with its own (gas cost) fee - needed to get the "data" on chain with calls to Set Palette, Add Composites, Add Asset, Add Punks, etc. and a last Seal Contract to seal off / make unchangeable.

266 txns with total cost 4.049621405 ETH (~$12,260) according to BokkyPooBah's spreadsheet calculation.

If you are looking for the on-chain data (attributes or the pixel matrix / bitmap and so on) - the data is NOT in the contract source but in the 266 transaction (txn) inputs. See punks.contracts/punksdata/transactions.txt.

Q: What about the Matt & John's® Contract V2?

See Inside the Matt & John's® CryptoPunksMarket V2 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 Matt & John's® Punks (WPUNKS) V2

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 »

Punk, the Shell Version

The (crypto) punk command line tool lets you mint your own 24×24 pixel punk images off chain from the True Official Genuine Matt & John's® punk 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 Matt & John's® punks 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 Matt & John's® punks 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 Matt & John's® Punks 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 »

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

Artonymous Artikfakt writes:

Playing around trying to generate some Punks [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: Punks Picasso Style, Artonymous Artikfakt)

Famous Punks Look-Alikes

famouspunks.com - a website dedicated to matching pixel punks 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.

Classic or V1 - "First Deploy" - 10 000 More Punks

When Matt & John's® punks launched, the contract was exploitable. Sellers didn't get paid. LarvaLabs quickly launched a fixed version of the contract, which everyone uses.

But the V1 tokens are still out there.

What about the punks V1 Contract?

See Inside the CryptoPunks V1 Blockchain Contract / Service »

Wrapped Punks V1 (WPUNKS1)

V1 punks are "wrapped" as "standardized" non-fungible tokens (ERC-721) for sale on markets, see Classic Punks for more.

Markets include:

• Wrapped CryptoPunks V1 @ OpenSea

What about the Wrapped CryptoPunks V1 (WPUNKS1) contract?

See Inside the Wrapped CryptoPunks V1 (WPUNKS1) Blockchain Contract / Service »

Remakes

Punks, Polkadot Edition ("SubstraPunks")

In 2020, the devs created the artist - okay fine, the algo - who drew the Substrapunks, as an homage to Matt & John's® punks.

The team didn't expect their hackathon project to have any value. Just like Matt & John's® punks - 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

Punks, 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

Punks, Binance Edition ("Bunks")

Warning: There is a project called [Punks, Binance Edition] ("Binance Punks") that has taken the art from Matt & John's® punks 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 Matt & John's® 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 Matt & John's® punk V2 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 »

Punk #3100 - Conceptual Art Resale - Discuss: Can You Steal from A Robot? Who Cares About "Provenance"?

By engaging their so-called Matt & John's® punks [pixel] art with the Ethereum [blockchain] network, Larva Labs should be believers in the self-governing ideals of crypto. I question Larva Labs' motives [it's all about $$$, isn't it?], understanding of art, understanding of "punk" and understanding of crypto.

-- Ryder Ripps, Conceptual Artist

o o o

Matt & John's® punks [tokens] are sought after for their blockchain-ensured scarcity and computer-generated rarity. No two are alike. It's that point [that conceptual artist Ryder] Ripps attempted to press with his latest artistic statement, an effort to goad Larva Labs into taking copyright action, he said.

On June 29, 2021 Ripps listed a [new art] token titled "Punk #3100" [for sale] on the Foundation [crypto market], a near-facsimile of an official punk by the same name. Ripps's version, sold for 2.189 ETH (~$4,620 USD), was of slightly higher [4000×4000] resolution than the original [24×24], which last sold on March 11 for a record-breaking (at the time) 4,200 ETH (~$7,584,485).

(Source: Matt & John's® Punks Get Punked)

(Source: Ryder Ripps @ Instagram)

The copyright takedown letter by the million dollar Larva Labs fraudsters. How punk is that? Can you copyright machine-generated images? Or how "original" is a 8-bit 24×24 pixel image that any 6-year old can redraw "by hand" in minutes?

Ryder Ripps writes back:

The claims of copyright violation should be rejected because:

My use of the material is legally protected because it falls within the "fair use" provision of the copyright regulations. This work is transformative. If the complainant disagrees that this is fair use, they are free to take up the matter with me directly, in the courts. You, the Internet Service Provider (ISP), are under no obligation to settle this dispute, or to take any action to restrict my speech at the behest of this complaint. [...]

(Source: Ryder Ripps @ Instagram)

Note: If the creator of the work that was taken down believes the action was erroneous, they can file an appeal and this puts the onus back on the company or person who filed the DMCA notice originally - and they now have ten days to file a lawsuit supporting their claims - if they don't they then are essentially conceding that they don't have the legal position to support their initial action and the site in question is free to reinstate whatever was taken down. And again, because US Copyright law does specifically call out fair use and parody.

Larva Labs backed down and the Foundation [crypto market] has reinstated Ryder's Punk #3100.

After fighting a DMCA notice served to me by Larva Labs on July 1st 2021, I won and on July 16th, Foundation reinstated my work (Punk #3100) - unequivocally proving my punk is more punk.

It is impossible to "copy" an art token.

(Source: Punk #3100 – Rebirth @ Foundation)

Phunks (Mirror / Left-Facing) Parody - Copyright (or Left) Wars

Phunks face left on the right side of history. Original "flipped" from right-facing to left-facing punk art collection.

(web: cryptophunks.com, twitter: cryptophunks)

<=>

The purpose of Phunks is to poke fun at the high-brow, pompous group of people that are reflecting the "old-school" rules of art into this new frontier of art tokens. Phunks want to test the limits of "parody" [with a new "flipped" art collection] and bias against centralized marketplaces, of provenance on the blockchain, censorship, while also setting out to unite strangers and collectors from around the world.

(Source: The Phunks Manifesto)

1,357 Phunk family members and growing. You can't stop the phunk.

o o o

[Pixel Art] tokens thrive because of an authentic and organic growth in their communities. Were the Phunks original in their flipping [from right-facing to left-facing] of the punk art? Not really. But did they manage to create an authentic communal experience? Yep. I see them as parody, minimal as it may be, and a fun one.

And another copyright takedown letter by the million dollar Larva Labs fraudsters. How punk is that?

Phunks comments:

The OpenSea [crypto art reseller market] has received a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) [takedown] from Larva Labs. We are witnessing copyright laws unilaterally applied in a [new crypto] world where decentralization and provenance should be paramount. Ironically, Phunks are the real punks in this fight for censorship resistance. History in the making.

o o o

Dear LaraLabs, the art token community deserves to hear from you directly. Phunks parodied Matt & John's® Punks V2 and opened the doors for over 1,000 new owners who learned and enjoyed punk's history and attributes. Punks value have also increased during this time. Why are you threatened by Phunks? There was never malicious intent in passing off a Phunk as a Punk.

No one has reportedly been "scammed", because anyone that visited our site knew it was a parody. As pioneers in the art token market, is provenance not one of your guiding principles? What is the goal behind the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown?

(Source: CryptoPhunks, July 2021)

And follows-up with an open "Phunk is Punk" letter to Larva Labs:

In the words of your co-founder Matt Hall, the blockchain "provides a layer of trust that removes the need for lawyers and middlemen." But over the last several weeks, we've seen that your actions speak louder than these words. You have called for lawyers and have ignored our public and private requests for an open dialogue regarding the DMCA issued to OpenSea requesting the delisting of Phunks.

This letter aims to bring public attention to the issue(s) at hand. During these formative times in the NFT space, Phunks aims to push boundaries in order to set the foundation for a future where NFTs can leverage blockchain technology for its strengths: provenance and authenticity.

Phunks poked fun at those who were applying the "old-school" rules of art into this new frontier of [non-fungible] tokens. Deceptive and fraudulent copycats should be mitigated, but Phunks has been a clear parody from the start with no reported cases of a user buying a Phunk thinking it was a Punk. In this project’s short lifespan thus far, Phunks have brought in over 1,000 new holders who learned about the Punks’ attributes and history. Some even went on to buy a Punk. Others are just happy to have joined a new and accessible community that embraces the philosophies that web3 was built on.

Larva Labs: have you entertained the perspective that altpunk projects create incremental value for Punks by perpetually solidifying their legacy? Where do you draw the line on what is deemed parody and what is not? We’ve spoken with various attorneys who have agreed that "parody" and "satire" are legal areas that currently stand unclear in light of lawsuits involving Andy Warhol’s work. Do you believe that Warhol’s iconic Campbell’s Soup Cans and the commentary it generated crossed the line as well?

Additionally, Larva Labs has not addressed their own community’s questions regarding IP ownership of Matt & John's® punks. Do Matt & John's® punk V2 owners have commercial rights to their punks? Can punk owners permit the phunk of their punk to exist? Is Larva Labs planning to wipe a bunch of punk projects off of OpenSea now that they are a $100m+ company? The [non-fungible] token space, punk HODLers, and phunk HODLers need clarity, collaboration, and forward thinkers to pave the way for a decentralized future.

It's time for an awakening in the [non-fungible] token community. It’s time to stand up to censorship resistance, for change beyond our pervasive web v2 systems, and for true decentralization. Phunks stand for these principles. What is truly punk can not be stopped. Long live phunks, on the blockchain, forever.

"If you don't believe me or don't get it, I don't have time to try to convince you, sorry." - Satoshi

Yours Trustlessly, <br> The Phunks

More reading about Phunks:

Phunks: Just a Flip or a Movement? by Ani Alexander, July 2021

History

Matt & John's® punk 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 Matt & John's punks, 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

Matt & John's® punks 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 Matt & John's® punk'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 Matt & John's® punk [token], which Hall and Watkinson offered for free.

Then, in June 2017, the pair got in touch with Mashable and told them about Matt & John's® punks. "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 Matt & John's® punks 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 Matt & John's® Punks' Creators Charmed the Art World and Paved the Way for Blockchain Art by Jessica Klein, Breaker Mag, January 2019)

In their smart contract, they reserved the first 1,000 [pixel] punks for themselves. Hall published the contract to the blockchain and posted a link to their website on Twitter and Reddit.

They were met, mostly, with silence. In the first five days, a handful of people, Calderon among them, found the project and snapped up the rarest Punks. "We were feeling sort of silly," Watkinson says, when only a few dozen of them had been claimed. Then, on June 16, the tech site Mashable published a post with an eye-catching headline: "This Ethereum-Based Project Could Change How We Think About Digital Art."

Within 24 hours, all the punks were gone; one man who saw the post amassed 758 of them.

(Source: The 10,000 [Pixel Punk] Faces That Launched an Non-Fungible [Art] Token Revolution, Wired, November 2021)

Articles

2017

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

2019

A Physical Model for Digital Art Ownership - The Matt & John's® Punks in their First Gallery Show. by Larva Labs, February 2019

Matt & John's® Punks Two Year Anniversary - A look at the activity and trends over the first two years of the Matt & John's® Punks. by Larva Labs, June 2019

2021

An Ethereum-based Matt & John's® Punk 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 Matt & John's® Punk V2 sells for 605 ETH, or $750,000. Is the market getting overheated? by Andrew Thurman, Coin Telegraph, January 2021

The Cult of Matt & John's® Punks V2 by Lucas Matney, Tech Crunch, April 2021 -- Ethereum's "oldest non-fungible token project" may not actually be the first, but it's the wildest

One of the aliens [ Punk #7804] was sold [for 4,200 Ether (about $7.5M)] [...] a century from now the blocky image sold would be seen as the "Mona Lisa of digital art."

The pixelated alien portraits belonged to an non-fungible token platform called Matt & John's® punks. In the world of non-fungible tokens, the platform is as close to ancient history as it gets, meaning it’s almost four years old.

10 things to know about Matt & John's® Punks, the original Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), Christie's, April 2021

For the first time, 5,184 pixels' worth of a revolutionary non-fungible token project will go up for auction at a traditional auction house, courtesy of the project creators and pioneers [- Matt Hall and John Watkinson, founders of New York-based software company Larva Labs -] themselves.

[...]

The Matt & John's® punks 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.

[...]

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, Matt & John's® punk #6965, a fedora-wearing ape punk, sold for 800 ether - equivalent to $1.5 million. And on 11 March 2021, Matt & John's® punk #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.

[...]

Larva Labs' set comprises nine Matt & John's® punks [#2, #532, #58, #30, #635, #602, #768, #603, #757], all from their original collection [24 x 24 pixels each], in a single lot that highlights the series' best features: muttonchops, earrings, big shades, crazy hair, a hoodie, a mohawk and more. [...] Estimate: $7,000,000-9,000,0000. Offered in 21st Century Evening Sale on 13 May at Christie's in New York.

Christie's to Auction Off Nine Matt & John's® Punks Non-Fungible Tokens by Will Gottsegen, Decrypt, April 2021

According to promotional materials, nine Matt & John's® punks are being auctioned together in a single lot at the 21st Century Evening Sale on May 13. [Estimate: $7,000,000-9,000,0000.].

Ethereum User Bids $6.3 Million on 16 Matt & John's® Punks Within Minutes by Tim Copeland, Decrypt, April, 2021 -- Ahead of a Christie's auction of nine Matt & John's® punks [non-fungible] tokens, one investor is prepared to pay big money to get his hands on a number of other punks.

It's worth taking these valuations with a pinch of salt. Since there are so few sales of Matt & John's® punks, but such high valuations, it's not impossible that investors are making sales among themselves to drive up the value of their non-fungible tokens. This is one of the flipsides of the data being publicly available on the blockchain - it's accessible to anyone around the world, but it's possible for people to hide their identity behind multiple addresses.

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