YugaLabs lets go of CryptoPunks, will the next stop for NFT blue chips be the museum?

Written by ChandlerZ, Foresight News

In May 2025, CryptoPunks was sent to the museum.

To be precise, Yuga Labs transferred the intellectual property rights of this project that pioneered the NFT art era to a non-profit organization called Infinite Node Foundation (NODE). The latter announced that the acquisition not only includes all the intellectual property rights of CryptoPunks, but also comes with a $25 million cultural fund and will promote an ambitious museum cooperation plan dedicated to bringing CryptoPunks into mainstream art institutions around the world.

It also loudly declared: This is not a transfer of ownership, but liberation.

Within a few hours after the announcement, the floor price of CryptoPunks quickly rebounded to about 48 ETH, and the trading volume also increased significantly. The once silent trading interface became active again, as if reminding people of the glory that this set of pixel icons once carried.

This blue chip project, once regarded as a Web3 totem, has entered a new chapter after years of market peaks and emotional troughs. The foundation has also formed an advisory committee to manage CryptoPunks. Larva Labs founder and artist Matt Hall and John Watkinson will return to manage the committee, and Wylie Aronow (Yuga Labs) and Erick Calderon (Art Blocks) will participate in the committee. In addition, NODE will hire Natalie Stone as an advisor to support the NODE team during the transition period.

But is this return a new beginning or the end of an era?

From pioneer to classic, the past and present of CryptoPunks

CryptoPunks was created in 2017 by Canadian developer group Larva Labs, inspired by punk culture and generative art. 10,000 pixel avatars were minted for free. At that time, there was no NFT market, and only a small number of Ethereum users claimed these images through smart contracts.

What really made CryptoPunks become a totem of การเข้ารหัสลับ culture was the explosion of the NFT market in 2021. That year, NFT became the subject of mainstream discussion, with everyone from Christies auction house to mainstream media focusing on this new asset species. CryptoPunks, due to their origin identity, were regarded as classical relics of digital art, and their prices soared.

In August 2021, Visa announced that it had purchased CryptoPunk #7610 for 49.5 ETH, calling it an important asset for companies entering the NFT era. This behavior triggered widespread imitation and promoted a short-term craze for institutions to purchase NFT. In the same year, many Punk portraits were sold at high prices at Sothebys and Christies, such as Punk #7523 (commonly known as Covid Alien), which was sold at Sothebys for US$11.7 million, setting a record for the auction of a single Punk. After experiencing the craziest stage of the NFT market, the total transaction volume of CryptoPunks once exceeded US$3 billion, casting its mythical status as a top blue chip.

However, the peak did not last long. With the launch of Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) in the spring of 2021, and the rapid construction of a strong social community, commercial authorization system and celebrity communication power, CryptoPunks gradually revealed its fundamentalist but silent limitations. Up-and-coming players have won a larger user base through flexible IP licensing, peripheral products and party activities, while CryptoPunks has been gradually marginalized in terms of community activity and scalability because of Larva Labs non-commercial stance, which prevents holders from commercializing their Punk IP.

This division eventually led to Yuga Labs acquisition of CryptoPunks and Meebits IP in March 2022. The initial news of the acquisition had a positive impact on the price of CryptoPunks, but the actual progress after the acquisition was not as radical as expected by the outside world. CryptoPunks has not been commercialized on a large scale in the hands of Yuga. On the one hand, it avoids the vulgar IP generalization; but on the other hand, it has not been able to establish an active ecosystem like BAYC. In the two years when Web3 entered the cold winter, CryptoPunks has gradually become a respected but untouched existence.

Symbolic de-financialization, non-profit foundation takes over NFT totems

The buyer of this sale, Infinite Node Foundation, is a non-profit foundation established in 2025 and founded by venture capitalist Micky Malka and curator Becky Kleiner. Its vision is to incorporate Internet native art into the mainstream cultural system and conduct research, exhibitions and archiving.

According to NODE, this acquisition is not a traditional merger and acquisition. The foundation has promised to build a permanent exhibition space in Palo Alto and exhibit a complete set of 10,000 CryptoPunks avatars for the first time. This is the first time in the history of NFT that a project has been curated as a complete collection. At the same time, the exhibition hall will simultaneously run a real-time Ethereum node, emphasizing the on-chain locality and immutability of on-chain art.

NODEs language is very clear. They want to fight for a formal position for Internet native art in the academic system and museum system. It seems that CryptoPunks are completing an identity transformation, no longer a commodity that can be hyped, but a cultural heritage that can be exhibited, studied, and narrated.

But this transformation is not entirely romantic. Although the transaction amount was not disclosed, the $25 million cultural donation fund established by NODE at the same time may hint at Yuga Labs profit-taking exit.

For the latter, the sale of CryptoPunks is more like a resource focus and financial optimization. Yuga initiated large-scale layoffs in 2024 and clearly focused its business core on the Otherside virtual world and ApeCoin ecosystem. The sale of Punks may be a rational separation.

Who เด็ดขาดnes the artistic nature of NFT?

Interestingly, the main theme behind this transaction, to a certain extent, is no longer valuation or floor price, but its status in art history.

NODE’s intervention has incorporated CryptoPunks into a more traditional cultural narrative: permanent collections, academic research, art curation… These words sound more like the responsibilities of MoMA or the British Museum rather than the content of daily discussions in the crypto community.

In fact, the trend of NFTs moving towards museumization has long existed. In 2023, Autoglyphs was collected and exhibited by the Serpentine Gallery in London; Fidenza and Ringers began to be classified by curatorial institutions as representatives of the Generative Art Movement; ผึ้งples Everydays became the starting point for NFTs museum entry after it was sold at Christies for US$69 million.

From this perspective, the emergence of NODE is a gentle arrangement. It does not attempt to empower CryptoPunks, nor does it change its original appearance, but rather incorporates it into an institutional art protection track. If the buyer this time is a commercial company, its operating logic is likely to be IP licensing, commercial co-branding, and traffic monetization. Although these practices can bring short-term benefits, they may eliminate the symbolism of CryptoPunks as a symbol of digital native culture.

However, a new question arises: what is the next narrative of NFT?

NODE said in the announcement: This is not a transfer of ownership, but liberation. When CryptoPunks become old money and become collections, we may also be witnessing the slow transition of NFT from a high-volatility financial experiment to a low-frequency cultural style. The transformation of CryptoPunks is like a mirror, reflecting the anxiety of this industry.

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