Larva Labs, the creator of CryptoPunks, has found itself in the bad light for reissuing V1 CryptoPunks as ERC-721 Ethereum tokens. Each token had a different background color than the standard Punks.
The unofficial V1 Punks portal said the recovery of the original Punks smart contract is a community-led and rapidly-growing phenomenon. It is made up of original Punk claimants, NFT historians, digital archeologists, and talented developers. However, the creator of CryptoPunks recently said they weren’t the real CryptoPunks NFTs. The market was rift with mixed messages which created great confusion. Dozens of non-fungible tokens were sold, and the platform said it shouldn’t be considered legitimate.
On January 25, Larva Labs tweeted that PSA V1 Punks are not official CryptoPunks. The platform said they have around 1,000 of them but don’t like them. It also said that proceeds of the same will be used to buy real CryptoPunks. Matt Hall, the co-founder, apologized for selling its own V1 Punks. He described it as “stupid” and a “bad decision”. Hall said they made a big mistake by interacting with the contract. The platform thought that by announcing their intentions and selling some of the tokens, they would show their distaste for it and others would do the same. But it was a bad decision. The platform regrets doing so and apologized to the community.
Hall revealed that Larva Labs made around $622,000 from the V1 NFT sales. The platform used a portion of the funds to buy a standard V2 CryptoPunks. It will use the rest of the money to buy back additional CryptoPunks NFTs and donate to the Rainforest Foundation. Hall said the platform has had a well-principled approach to the CryptoPunks project from the beginning until they did a stupid thing. The platform learned a hard lesson.
