Matt Hall, a well-known name at Larva Labs, created the popular NFT collections CryptoPunks v1 and V2, said that he would take “the needed steps” in the next few days. This statement was made in connection with the news on alleged copyright violations/infringements related to the name and art of CryptoPunks, v1. This would usually result in a takedown notice submission under the DMCA or Digital Millenium Copyright Act. This notice is sent to the platform which hosts auction content.
Larva Labs created the CryptoPunks version 1 collection for NFT and it contained a fixed 10,000 item supply. Soon, some users found a bug in the smart contract of this project and this helped buyers to withdraw their ETH after buying. This is considered a theft of the CryptoPunks NFTs and the collection was deemed to be inauthentic.
To replace version1, Larva Labs launched version 2, again of 10,000 images, a limited supply. This move resulted in a total of 20,000 CryptoPunk images which are in existence and circulating. Half the supply is considered inauthentic and is in dispute. To top it all, Larva labs cannot destroy its version 1 as both versions’ smart contracts are closely linked to the same file – this according to user@0xstroudonian, on Twitter.
This problem was not picked up as the sale of CP v1 was banned by OpenSea, in spite of users wrapping them as ERC-721 tokens. This collection’s new listing on the LooksRare platform propelled OpenSea to revoke its ban. The CP v1 collection has an accumulated value in ETH of 12,069 or $34.1 million (total volume) on OpenSea. CP v2’s value is $2.22 billion total volume or in ETH, it is 819,900. Most blockchain supporters still remain dived over v1 and v2 authenticity issues.
