As is tradition, let's start with an explanation. Cryptopunks is one of the most popular collections of NFT tokens in the world. It consists of 10,000 pixelated faces with various unique attributes like hats, hairstyles, accessories and so on. Some of them are less rare, some more so.

The bottom line is that the rarer a particular NFT is, the more it is valued. And in 2021, the demand for Cryptopunks was incredible.

For clarity, here is a graph of the average sales value of members of this collection. According to The Block, on the first of January 2021 the figure was only $862, and now it’s over the $97,000 level.

Average sales value of NFT tokens from the Cryptopunks line

However, this lineup has now run into problems.

Where did the different versions of “cryptopunks” come from?

The very popular NFT-collection CryptoPunks is actually a second version of itself. That is, it should more correctly be called CryptoPunks v2. The first version of the collection was long forgotten and not traded anywhere because of a critical bug in its smart contract.

CryptoPunks v1 sale page

As a reminder, Larva Labs distributed NFT tokens from the CryptoPunks v1 line in 2017, but a little later it turned out that due to a bug, the NFT seller could both receive money from the buyer and keep the token itself. So the collection was quickly deemed "illegitimate", and soon Larva Labs released CryptoPunks v2. These are the same "CryptoPunks" that became so popular last year.

The day before CryptoPunks v1 appeared on OpenSea’s rival platforms with the prefix “wrapped” so that the collection could be distinguished from the now popular “original” – although, as we can see, by that logic, it is the first version of the tokens that can be called the original. All of this forced OpenSea management to reconsider their decision, and the NFT collection reappeared on the site. By today, the volume of transactions with it has crossed the 315.44 ETH mark, or almost a million dollars. That means the tokens were in substantial demand.

But the battle for the authenticity of the NFT collection seems to be heating up with renewed vigour. In an announcement in the official Discord channel called CryptoPunks v1, developer Velinova.eth claims to have been in talks with a “top-notch intellectual property lawyer from the US”. According to him, traders “can legally continue to trade these CryptoPunks”, and consider them authentic.

Velinova.eth appeal

It’s all about the fact that Larva Labs had previously filed a notice with OpenSea alleging a breach of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the US copyright law.

DMCA infringement notice

CryptoPunks v1 is not yet on OpenSea, but will the collection appear there in the future? It's likely that the fact of its "authenticity" will attract more buyers, and eventually CryptoPunks will become not 10, but 20 thousand.

Another notable news of the week from the world of unique digital assets is the launch of Aave’s Polygon-based Lens Protocol decentralised social platform. According to Decrypt’s sources, the initiative is set to become a “social networking in Web3 based on smart contracts” with extended NFT support.

Lens Protocol users can create profiles based on unique NFT tokens that “hold the history of all posts, comments and other generated content.” Subscribing to someone also generates so-called “follow NFTs,” that is, individual tokens. At the same time, users can collect the published work of content creators on the platform and republish it using a “mirror” feature, which acts as a referral link with the ability to generate revenue from a chain of content reposts.


We think the situation with Cryptopunks has arisen is strange. At this point, it's unclear exactly whether the original collection will remain relevant. And for investors, that's important, because if it does, there will be twice as many genuine punks, and that will have a negative impact on their rarity. However, now the cryptocurrency community can only wait for the situation to develop. In the meantime, NFT is finding more and more applications on various platforms.

Will Lens Protocol become a competitor to Twitter? Follow the development of the project in our Millionaire Cryptochat. There we will talk about other topics related to the world of blockchain and decentralisation.