Last month, Larva Labs announced the auction of a sample of nine Punks from the CryptoPunks project at Christie’s. Today, the auction house announced that the nonfungible tokens (NFTs) were sold for almost $17 million.
The CryptoPunks project is a landmark in CryptoArt. It started in 2017 when Larva Labs’ Matt Hall and John Watkinson software generated 10,000 “Punks” – pixel characters with very distinct physical features – that could be traded on the CryptoPunks platform. At the time, there were already digital artists with a significant following and breaking through the barriers of traditional art displays. However, the CryptoPunks project went a step further by launching the computer-generated pixelart as a tradable NFT.
While the market for digital collectibles today is fairly competitive, Punks are considered as the first of its kind. They challenged the concept of ownership early on, as all 10,000 Punks are accessible for viewing on Larva Labs website, but at any given moment, there is only one owner. Transaction history and proof of ownership are encoded on the Ethereum blockchain.
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