


They launched to modest interest from a small community of blockchain enthusiasts who only had to pay a few pennies in Ethereum “gas” transaction fees to own their own punk.
#Space punks roadmap generator
While the creators had a hand in curating some elements, they let their generator take control of the creativity. Some punks had a handful of attributes, some had none, some were apes, some were aliens. By June, they had created 10,000 characters with different hairstyles, hats and glasses for a project called CryptoPunks that would be hosted on the nascent Ethereum blockchain. Image Credits: Lucas Matney A ‘more honest’ stock marketīack in early 2017, John Watkinson and Matt Hall were playing with a pixelated character generator they built, and they were pretty enthusiastic about the fun little pop art portraits they had been cooking up. When you look at CryptoPunks, are they art? Are they collectibles? Are they… you know, well… what are they exactly?” “In NFT world, people are talking about selling Jack Dorsey tweets, Top Shots and Beeple in the same sentence right now,” Sotheby’s CEO Charles Stewart told TechCrunch in an interview. Today, the cheapest punk you can buy will run you about $30,000 in Ethereum cryptocurrency, while the rarest may be worth just shy of $10 million.ĬryptoPunks have captured plenty of attention, but even with all eyeballs on the project, people still aren’t sure exactly what they’re looking at. The sudden rise in punk prices is owed to an explosion of interest in NFTs largely brought about by climbing cryptocurrency prices, the rise in popularity of Dapper Labs’ NBA Top Shot and the resurgence of the physical collectibles markets, all of which have made some investors more comfortable with the idea of betting on digital goods. The platform has seen nearly $200 million worth of transaction volume in official deals since launch, according to NFT tracking site CryptoSlam, with 98% of that volume flowing through the platform in the past few months. That’s when it suddenly exploded, dragging into the fray Silicon Valley CEOs, prominent venture capitalists, famous YouTubers, poker stars and major business personalities.

Since then, the economy built around trading these images has sauntered on with a small but passionate community, at least until a few months ago.
#Space punks roadmap for free
There are 10,000 punks, all of which were procedurally generated and claimed for free when the project launched in 2017. In the world of NFTs, the platform is as close to ancient history as it gets, meaning it’s almost four years old. The pixelated alien portraits belonged to an NFT platform called CryptoPunks. Punk #7804, which recently sold for 4,200 Ether (about $7.5M at the time of sale)
