‘What The Punk’ film follows the history of Ethereum’s iconic NFT CryptoPunks

The story of the most iconic project in crypto art begins in a bleak Brooklyn neighborhood. “The most polluted waterway in the entire country,” says Matt Hall of the environment that inspired his work with Larva Labs co-founder John Watkinson in the new documentary “What the Punk.”

This 80-minute counterculture story follows two unassuming Canadian programmers who began experimenting with technology and art in 2005, and are now on display at the Center Pompidou in Paris, where CryptoPunk #110 – donated by current IP owner Yuga Labs – has been on display since 2023. .

In the late 2000s, while developing mobile apps, Hall and Watkinson started working on the Pixel Character Generator, a cool feature for creating unique profile photos with overlays of basic pixel elements.

Then came the rise of Ethereum. As longtime sports card collectors, they felt that the blockchain offered enormous development potential that could help them create a digital equivalent to their childhood passion: a new kind of collectible.

Composed of 10,000 algorithmically generated pixel images with 87 unique features, CryptoPunks inspired the ERC-721 standard and spawned the profile photo (PFP) movement that later spread through Yugas Bored Ape Yacht Club and countless other spiritual successors.

Matt Hall and John Watkinson launched CryptoPunks in June 2017. For its first week, the release went largely unnoticed in the proto-art-tech community. But one Mashable article drew attention to the free claim. Within a few days the entire stock was gone.

The secondary sales gradually gained momentum, eventually reaching a number of sales of ETH worth more than $10 million. The hype and influx of money would help fuel the emerging scene NFTs.

“What The Punk” brings together some of the most prominent personalities who contributed to blockchain’s momentum in art history: former Christie’s digital art leader Noah Davis (who led CryptoPunks under Yuga), art expert Yehudit Mam by Daddycollector Then Polkoand long-time moderator of Punk Discord Tschuuly.

Erick “Snow Woman” Calderon also acknowledges how his experience as a punk collector and active community member helped him envision himself Art blocksthe successful generative art platform Ethereum.

As a counterpoint, ‘What The Punk’ emphasizes the practice of Robustness, an early crypto artist. Robness decried the hype surrounding CryptoPunks, which diverted attention from the artistic aspect of the project to fuel speculative investment. So in 2021 he bought the Punk #2317 and immediately burned it as an art gesture.

Still in love with the artistic core of the project, Robness called Punks “the Warhol of crypto art,” adding that it represented “a movement – ​​we’re only at the beginning of it.”

Behind the movie

Director Hervé Martin-Delpierre – who previously helmed ‘Daft Punk Unchained’ – and producer Marc Lustigman were hooked on the CryptoPunks’ story and spent three years uncovering the secrets behind the Punks and interviewing major names in crypto art. From artists to gallery owners, collectors to auctioneers, they have captured a rich range of voices that show how this collection revolutionized the art world.

Lustigman said Declutter that the concept for the documentary emerged during the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic, before the 2021 NFT craze that supercharged Punks prizes.

“A friend told me, ‘This is the future of art; you should buy some.” At first I thought he was joking,” Lustigman recalls. “I was only focused on the images. Gradually something started to draw me in, even obsess me! Six months later I understood the genius behind it, and the story I discovered was so wild that I wanted to make a movie about it.

“It was the Punks who introduced us to crypto art,” Martin-Delpierre added, noting that their use of smart contracts to power on-chain art projects “brought digital art to fruition. They are behind the creation of what followed: the development of an entire artistic ecosystem.”

The filmmakers consciously avoided getting involved in the technicalities of the blockchain, focusing instead on the impact of CryptoPunks, both supportive and dissenting voices, and the collection’s growing reach within the traditional art world. Still, there were some quirky elements to explain, such as the Glitched “V1 Punks” which were abandoned and replaced but still exist on the blockchain.

“The challenge was to explain extremely complex things – like the V1 Punks – to people who were not familiar with them [the crypto] world,” said Martin-Delpierre. “We looked for the right story format to do this, because these key moments help [people] better understand how art functions on the blockchain. This isn’t a movie about the Punks; it is about the journey of three contemporary artists.”

“From the beginning, we wanted to go beyond a simple success story, to delve deeper into the development of art on the blockchain,” Lustigman added. “Robness joined halfway through and echoed Matt and John’s trajectory: artists who fought to ensure their art would be seen and recognized. He acts as a catalyst.”

CryptoPunks launched before most people knew what NFTs were, then blew up and generated billions of dollars in trading volume – but have seen cooling trading momentum over the past few years despite the the occasional big sale that continues to turn heads and make headlines. The documentary covers the highs and lows during that rollercoaster journey.

As filmmakers, they were also tasked with telling a story about a relatively niche project, with the goal of both honoring and satisfying its community of fans, while expanding its reach and bringing that story to a much wider audience to bring.

“As documentary makers, we look broadly and ask questions,” they say in a joint response. “We are neither pro nor anti-NFT. We simply want to bring this material to the general public so they can form their own opinions without cultural bias. This film is a snapshot of our times: creative, somewhat naive people who are either swallowed up or fighting against overwhelming forces.’

“What the Punk” was released internationally on June 11 on VIMEO OTT for a limited period of three months and on ARTE in France and Germany. The European premiere took place on June 11 during Art Basel 2024, as part of Digital Art Mile, a new format for digital art fairs in Basel.