Yuga Labs lets go of CryptoPunks, is the next stop for NFT blue chips the museum?

Written by: ChandlerZ, Foresight News

In May 2025, CryptoPunks were “sent to the museum.”

Specifically, it was Yuga Labs that transferred the intellectual property of this project, which pioneered the NFT art era, to a non-profit organization called Infinite Node Foundation (NODE). The latter announced that this acquisition not only includes the full intellectual property rights of CryptoPunks but also comes with a $25 million cultural fund and will drive an ambitious museum collaboration plan aimed at incorporating CryptoPunks into mainstream global art institutions.

It also announced high-profile: “This is not a transfer of ownership, but liberation.”

Within hours of the announcement, the floor price of CryptoPunks rapidly rebounded to around 48 ETH, and the trading volume also showed a significant increase. The once-silent trading interface became active again, as if reminding people of the glory that this set of pixel icons once carried.

This blue-chip project, once regarded as the “Web3 totem,” is entering a new chapter after years of market peaks and emotional valleys. The foundation has also formed an advisory committee to manage CryptoPunks, with Larva Labs founders and artists Matt Hall and John Watkinson returning to lead the committee, joined by Wylie Aronow (Yuga Labs) and Erick Calderon (Art Blocks). Additionally, NODE will hire Natalie Stone as an advisor to support the NODE team during the transition.

But is this “return” a new beginning, or the end of an era?

From Pioneer to Classic, the Past and Present of CryptoPunks

CryptoPunks was born in 2017, created by the Canadian developer team Larva Labs, inspired by punk culture and generative art. 10,000 pixel avatars were minted for free, at a time when there was no NFT market, and only a small number of Ethereum users claimed these images through smart contracts.

What truly made CryptoPunks a totem of crypto culture was the explosion of the NFT market in 2021. That year, NFTs became a mainstream topic of discussion, capturing the attention of everyone from Christie’s auction house to mainstream media, all focusing on this new asset class. Due to their “originality” status, CryptoPunks were regarded as the “classical artifacts” of digital art, and their prices skyrocketed.

In August 2021, Visa announced the purchase of CryptoPunk #7610，称其为「企业进入 NFT 时代的重要资产」，这一行为引发广泛模仿，推动了机构购入 NFT 的短期热潮。同年，多枚 Punk 头像在苏富比与佳士得拍出高价，如 Punk #7523 (commonly known as “Covid Alien”) for 49.5 ETH, which sold for 11.7 million dollars at Sotheby’s, setting a record for a single Punk auction. After experiencing the craziest phase of the NFT market, the total transaction volume of CryptoPunks once exceeded 3 billion dollars, cementing its status as a “top blue-chip.”

However, the peak did not last long. With the launch of the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) in the spring of 2021, which quickly built a strong social community, commercial licensing system, and celebrity influence, CryptoPunks gradually revealed its fundamental but silent limitations. The newcomers won larger user bases through flexible IP licensing, peripheral products, and party events, while CryptoPunks, due to Larva Labs’ non-commercial stance, made it impossible for holders to commercialize their Punk IP, leading to its gradual marginalization in terms of community activity and scalability.

This division ultimately led to Yuga Labs acquiring the CryptoPunks and Meebits IP in March 2022. Initially, the acquisition news had a positive impact on the price of CryptoPunks, but the actual progress after the acquisition was not as aggressive as the outside world expected. Under Yuga’s ownership, CryptoPunks was not heavily commercialized; on one hand, it avoided the vulgarization of IP, but on the other hand, it also failed to establish an active ecosystem like BAYC. During the two years of Web3 entering a winter period, CryptoPunks gradually became a presence that is ‘respected but untouchable.’

Symbolic “de-financialization”, non-profit foundation takes over NFT totems

The buyer in this sale, Infinite Node Foundation, is a non-profit foundation established in 2025 by venture capitalist Micky Malka and curator Becky Kleiner. Its vision is to incorporate internet-native art into the mainstream cultural system and to conduct research, exhibitions, and archiving.

According to NODE, this acquisition is not a traditional merger in the conventional sense. The foundation has committed to building a permanent exhibition space in Palo Alto, where it will showcase the complete collection of 10,000 CryptoPunks avatars for the first time. This marks the first time in NFT history that a project is curated in its entirety. At the same time, the exhibition hall will operate a real-time Ethereum node, emphasizing the “on-chain locality” and “immutability” of on-chain art.

The language of NODE is very clear; they want to secure a formal position for internet-native art within the academic system and museum institutions. It seems that CryptoPunks is undergoing a transformation of identity, no longer a tradable commodity, but a “cultural heritage” that can be exhibited, studied, and narrated.

But this transformation is not entirely romantic. Although the transaction amount has not been disclosed, the $25 million cultural donation fund established by NODE may hint at Yuga Labs’ “profit-taking exit.”

For the latter, selling CryptoPunks is more like a resource focus and financial optimization. Yuga initiated large-scale layoffs in 2024 and clearly concentrated its business core on the Otherside virtual world and the ApeCoin ecosystem. Selling Punks could be a rational divestment.

Who is defining the “artistic nature” of NFTs?

Interestingly, the main line behind this transaction is no longer valuation or floor price to a certain extent, but rather the status in art history.

The involvement of NODE has incorporated CryptoPunks into a more traditional cultural narrative: permanent collections, academic research, art curation… These terms sound more like the responsibilities of MoMA or the British Museum, rather than the everyday discussions of the crypto community.

In fact, the trend of NFTs becoming “museum-like” has long been underway. In 2023, Autoglyphs were collected and exhibited by the Serpentine Gallery in London; Fidenza and Ringers began to be classified by curatorial institutions as representatives of the “generative art movement”; and Beeple’s “Everydays” became the starting point for NFTs’ “museum residency” after selling for $69 million at Christie’s.

From this perspective, the emergence of NODE is a gentle arrangement that does not attempt to “empower” CryptoPunks or change its original appearance, but rather incorporates it into a system of artistic protection. If the buyer is a commercial company, its operational logic is likely to be IP licensing, commercial collaborations, and monetizing traffic. While these practices may bring short-term profits, they could undermine the symbolic status of CryptoPunks as a hallmark of digital native culture.

However, new questions arise: what is the next narrative for NFTs?

NODE stated in the announcement: “This is not a transfer of ownership, but a liberation.” As CryptoPunks become old money and a “collection,” we may also be witnessing NFT slowly turning from a highly volatile financial experiment to a low-frequency cultural style. The transformation of CryptoPunks serves as a mirror, reflecting the anxieties of this industry.