➖PUNK

CryptoPhunks (Phunks) is a Non-Fungible Token (NFT) collection on the Ethereum blockchain. The project was created in June 2021 by a group of anonymous* developers to poke fun (parody) at the high-brow, pompous group of people that were reflecting the “old-school” rules of art into this new frontier of Crypto. What they did is they took all 10'000 CryptoPunks and flipped them the other way, they are the same 1:1 just facing Left.

Corporations didn't like flipped Punks and in July 2021, after receiving formal DMCA served by LarvaLabs for copyright infringement, the biggest NFT trading Marketplace OpenSea censored and banned the collection from their platform for the third and final time. Shortly after, the original Phunk developers compiled an Open Letter to LarvaLabs and left the project since.

Being censored and excluded from 98% of NFT Market, Phunk holders were left to face in real time what it means to be deplatformed by Corporations in decentralized environment where decentralization and provenance should be paramount and old rules not applied. While NFT Collections can be banned from centralized trading platform, they really cant be censored. Phunks live in form of ERC721 token on the Ethereum blockchain, forever.

It didn't take long before Phunks Community decided to take a stand and make a statement against censorship, self organised renegade group of Phunk Community builders took it upon themselves to create their own Phunks Marketplace called NotLarvaLabs and open-sourced the code for public good. Since then, Phunk community continued to build, innovate, pioneer and attract many developers interested in building in true decentralized Crypto environment where anyone with any skillset can grow, be inspired and supported by community of builders.

What is truly punk can not be stopped. Long live Phunks, on the blockchain, forever. ✊

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*In July 2021, the anonymous devs went out for a pack of smokes and never came back, completely abandoning the Phunks community. They did not transfer the smart contract, social media accounts, or the 496 CryptoPhunks NFTs held in the dev wallet.

In May 2022, Azuki developer under pseudonym ZAGABOND revealed himself as the original creator of CryptoPhunks followed by an apology and transfer of Smart Contract ownership, 496 CryptoPhunks and $1.44M from royalties to the Phunks community. This was result of excessive research done by Phunks community members Kiosko, Jpeg Papi, hwonder and Pauly.