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Once a behemoth in the NFT world, Yuga Labs has been gradually selling off the IP it owns. It’s already said goodbye to the Meebits, Legends of the Mara, and HV-MTL.
The latest? Yuga has sold the CryptoPunks to a new foundation, dubbed the Infinite Node Foundation, roughly three years after acquiring the rights from Larva Labs in 2022.
Last month, Node was created and got $25 million to put toward its mission — and NFTNow reported yesterday that Node acquired the CryptoPunks for about $20 million. A Node spokesperson declined to comment on that figure.
“This transition isn’t about ownership, but liberation. Freed from corporate friction and limitations, the Punk ethos can now thrive through a decentralized, community-driven future,” states Node’s post about the news.
Node is new. It was “made possible through the generosity” of VC Meyer “Micky” Malka of Ribbit Capital and Becky Kleiner. Node’s advisory board includes Yuga Labs and Bored Ape Yacht Club co-founder Wylie Aronow, Art Blocks founder Erick Calderon, and Larva Labs co-founders Matt Hall and John Watkinson — all prominent names in the crypto art world. Phil Mohun — who previously worked on crypto AI art group Bright Moments — is Node’s executive director. We don’t yet know whether Node has any other members.
The announcement revealed that Node will have a 12,000 square foot “permanent exhibition space” in Palo Alto, CA. The nonprofit plans to show off the entire CryptoPunks collection of 10,000 NFTs there.
Node won’t be the first NFT art gallery in the game, though. The Superchief Gallery has been around for years, with locations in Los Angeles and NYC.
Node’s purpose is to preserve and elevate digital art and onchain culture like the CryptoPunks. The Punks are its primary focus now, but long term it aims to create a space for digital art more broadly.
Punks are sometimes seen as the most “historic” NFT collection because they were launched on Ethereum back in 2017 (and now exist fully onchain). The Punks are believed to have inspired the ERC-721 standard, which is what most NFTs use today.
But are CryptoPunks a part of many mainstream modern art conversations these days? I’m not so sure — though I think Node wants to change that.
“With BAYC’s sudden success, we felt an owed responsibility to Matt, John and the wider crypto community to step up and become stewards, to help preserve what had started everything,” Aronow wrote in a post about buying and then selling the Punks.
“I also believe this deal gives Yuga some additional space to refocus on what it set out to build in the first place,” he added.
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