The Truth Behind The Rise of CryptoPunks… A well kept NFT secret
With the recent DMCA actions from LarvaLabs on the popular twitter project “CryptoPhunks” and the community backlash that followed on twitter it feels like there would be no better time to write this article I’ve been meaning to write. So here it goes, we’re going to address some of the narratives pushed by the CryptoPunks community that are questionable at best — and outright lies at worst.
If you like this content you can follow me for more contrarian takes at https://twitter.com/NFTmachine
Myths.
“CryptoPunks Are the First NFT on Ethereum”.
Contrary Evidence:
As you can see by this list put together by the NFT project 2 entire years before CryptoPunks in 2015 “Etheria” — there is a whole list of NFTs on Ethereum before CryptoPunks.
https://etheria.world/whatis.html
https://twitter.com/etheria_feed
CryptoPunks are Generative Artwork.
Punks are commonly described as 10,000 randomly generated immutable NFT avatars. There was nothing generative or random about their creation process.
They use no on-chain information to create their content. Somewhat related but not as widely believed is that the punks exist on chain. They do not. They point to an IPFS location.
“Organic” 1000x Growth.
We’ve reached the fun part that even NFT veterans might not be aware of. For those that have been around awhile you might remember that the platform Rarible kicked off the NFT bullmarket around Q4 of 2020 with a super innovative rewards system that rewarded their token to users their traded and sold artwork on their platform. It was great, until some opportunistic actors realized they could game the system — how? Wash trading of course.
The exploit for siphoning RARI rewards was extremely simple in hindsight.
- Commit some initial capital to driving up punks prices
- Wash trade at elevated ETH prices for larger RARI rewards (scaled by notional volume)
- Dump RARI for ETH to recover initial capital, pump punks market on secondary with the rest of the capital
I don’t have the capacity to go scrape Etherscan for all their transactions from Q3-Q4 on wrapped punks on the Rarible platform due to the number of players that were playing a part in this manipulation. It’s well known that the siphoning led to millions of USD of RARI rewards — the exact amount I've since forgotten but its hardly relevant.
When you consider the fact that the initial 1000x was a farce built on wash trading and free RARI rewards until the point that Rarible had to rework their rewards entirely… and then ice that cake with the fact that larvalabs then justified their hype and price increase by creating a false narrative around being the first NFT — that the wash traders then spread as fact on twitter. Seeing the problem here???
If you want proof on this take it from this credible video from an OG in the NFT space, Matty (aka DCL Blogger.)
https://youtu.be/GVhUwMSRyS4?t=1751
Sorry LarvaLabs, im not done. There’s one more thing to discuss.
DMCA to Shutout the Little Guy.
It wasn’t enough to establish a false narrative on being first. But LarvaLabs has displayed time and time again now that they are no different than corporate entities of yesteryear in terms of their maximization of profit (2.5 eth meebits drop w/o spending any of the millions on bettering the product of furthering your “metaverse” narrative …. really?)
If anything threatens their dominance that they can DMCA they’ve shown they wont hesitate to do that either. Does DMCAing everything that threatens your bottom line sound Web 3 to you? And don’t give me that shit it’s about their “intellectual property”.
No one is questioning which punks are the real punks when the derivatives trade at 1/1000th the value. Provenance is all you need in Web 3, not Corporate Lawyers and DMCA takedowns.
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The next section will be about things that aren’t objectively lies but are just things that don’t sit right with me personally. Please treat these differently from the above statements which are objectively factual.
Prominent Community Members Discrediting Other 2017 Projects
As many will know I’m a prominent collector of one of the other extremely early 2017 collectables, mooncats.
I have done my part to fight the misinformation and discrediting that has happened to the amazing devs behind this project. I feel for them in a similar way I feel for the Etheria devs from 2015 and other pioneers in this space who have been unjustly screwed over by LarvaLabs marketing / corporate suits.
I strongly believe that when all of this information is immutable and sitting on chain for us to dig through it won’t be possible for the prominent NFT voices that have been giving misleading narratives to hide the truth forever.
My next article will be about MoonCats and their technological achievements and historic “firsts” that aren’t well marketed but unlike the punks claim to “firsts” — are actually truthful.
Thanks for reading. Sorry to my punks friends. This isn’t personal, just business. -NFTmachine
