Decrypt’s NFT Project of the Year 2024: CryptoPunks

Earlier this month, Pudgy Penguins came within striking distance of dethroning CryptoPunks as the most expensive NFT collection in the world.

It had been a very long time since any other brand had even come close to achieving this feat, and Pudgy had the wind in its sails: building on the momentum of an upcoming symbolic air dropthe collection soared to incredible heights, exploding from a rock-bottom price of $19,000 in early November to more than $138,000 in mid-December.

It looked like the turnaround was going to happen. Then the PENGU token airdrop went live and – in typical crypto fashion – Pudgy Penguins collapsed in value by over 55% within hours.

Untouched, at the top of the heap, was CryptoPunks. The episode perfectly summed up the prevailing NFT narrative of 2024: while other collections were working overtime to meet demand via incentives And the promise of tokensCryptoPunks seemed to effortlessly float up in cultural significance, social cachet and, of course, value.

“While other projects struggle to justify themselves with comprehensive roadmaps, CryptoPunks still stand out as cultural icons,” shared Daniel Rosario, CryptoPunks holder and MetaMask ecosystem engagement manager. Declutter.

“Owning a Punk has come to represent a pure, decentralized form of digital identity – untethered by corporate influences, and celebrated for what it is, rather than what it could one day become,” he added.

As crypto becomes increasingly intertwined with Wall Street, Washingtonand the pillars of global power it once eschewed, CryptoPunks has emerged as an increasingly powerful time capsule of the industry’s fundamental values: decentralization, authenticity and true novelty.

Words that have since become empty marketing slogans in the NFT ecosystem – like community and utility – have undeniable meaning in the case of Punks. The collection, originated as an experiment in 2017 and offered for free to coiners, came years before NFTs were a coherent asset class.

An exhibition about CryptoPunks at the Museum Francisco Carolinum in Linz, Austria in the fall of 2024. Credit: Rainer Hosch Studio

In those early days, CryptoPunks embodied not only the promise of non-fungible digital tokens, but also of works of art that lived and traveled safely across the internet – a concept that has since brought about a revolution the art world. And in the years that followed 2017, the CryptoPunks online community provided a place for holders to interact and exchange ideas that would take over the crypto world.

One of those early adopters, the pseudonymous fashion entrepreneur moneysays the Punks community was a formative influence on his crypto journey in late 2020. In mid-December, Gmoney’s crypto-infused luxury and fashion label, 9dcc, launched its latest offering, a series of mysterious “Black Box” NFTs. Naturally, one of those boxes contained a rare CryptoPunk.

Gmoney told Declutter he decided to associate CryptoPunks with his latest sought-after collection – and not with any other NFT brand – because Punks represent the essence of his access to and relationship with crypto.

“What better way to hopefully enter the next bull market than with something similar, a tribute to that,” he said.

Major players in the luxury and art worlds continue to flock to CryptoPunks for similar reasons. Earlier this year, jeweler Swarovski debuted one tribute to CryptoPunks supported by auction house Christie’s. That flashy collaboration built on previous Punks projects and showcases from, among others Tiffany & Co. and some of the world’s most prestigious art institutions.

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Prominent CryptoPunks holders, including Gmoney and Erick Calderon, aka Snowfro, at a signing for a new book on CryptoPunks, released in 2024 by Yuga Labs. Credit: Yuga Labs

Over the course of 2024, that intangible but steadily increasing cultural value helped CryptoPunks post record sales, even as the rest of the NFT market remained under pressure. In March, a rare CryptoPunk sold for $16 millionduring the collection’s second-largest sale ever. Weeks later, another Punk sold for $16 million. The following month a third received a price tag of $12.4 million.

Perhaps ironically, the defiantly independent brand CryptoPunks currently falls under the stewardship from Yuga Labs, NFT’s largest company in the world.

In May, Yuga courted controversy after launching an “Artist in Residence” program designed to create new NFT collections that riffed on CryptoPunks. The resists to the program’s debut collection, designed by celebrated contemporary artist Nina Chanel Abney, was fast and resounding. Much of the backlash claimed that Yuga had no place in making money from CryptoPunks, and that such moves would diminish the essence of the collection.

Complicating that story, however, was the fact that much of the negative attention generated by Abney’s CryptoPunks project consisted of an “anti-woke” objection to the project’s celebration of racial and gender diversity.

Natalie Stone, Yuga’s leader at CryptoPunks, said that while she still stands behind Abney’s project on its artistic merits, the negative reactions it generated caused Yuga to reevaluate the CryptoPunks strategy.

“I think the response has clarified the reverence people feel for CryptoPunks,” Stone shared Declutter. “Generating revenue from the collection feels like an erosion of the principle of what punks mean.”

Since May, Stone says, Yuga has taken a more cautious approach to the collection, moving away from attempts to expand or innovate it. Instead, the company has redoubled its efforts to strengthen CryptoPunks’ legacy, especially in the realm of mainstream arts and culture.

“I want a CryptoPunk to be in every art history book you read that examines the great works of art of our time,” she said.

Yuga’s CryptoPunks leader Natalie Stone will speak at NFT Paris in February 2024. Credit: Yuga Labs

In the upper echelons of the traditional art world, it is becoming increasingly clear that CryptoPunks are in a class of their own compared to other NFT projects. Punks have been featured on the Center PompidouEurope’s largest museum of modern art, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; they are consistently auctioned alongside cultural treasures Sotheby’s And Christie’s.

Stone points to a new one book Released this year by Yuga, it chronicles the history of CryptoPunks as evidence of the kind of cultural footprint the company can help develop for the NFT collection that would otherwise be difficult to create for a decentralized community.

But ultimately, Stone says she is now acutely aware that CryptoPunks’ unique value proposition lies in its coveted status as “effortlessly cool.”

“Every time you try to make it cool, you fail,” she said.

“Trust me,” she added. “I tried.”