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

Author: ChandlerZ, Foresight News

In May 2025, CryptoPunks was "sent to the museum."

To be precise, Yuga Labs 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 all intellectual property rights of CryptoPunks but also comes with a $25 million cultural fund, which will promote an ambitious museum collaboration plan aimed at integrating CryptoPunks into mainstream global art institutions.

It also boldly declared: "This is not a transfer of ownership, but a liberation."

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

This blue-chip project, once regarded as a "Web3 totem," is entering a new chapter after years of market peaks and emotional lows. The foundation has also formed an advisory committee to manage CryptoPunks, with Larva Labs founders and artists Matt Hall and John Watkinson returning to manage the committee, alongside 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 Vanguard to Classic: The Past and Present of CryptoPunks

CryptoPunks was born in 2017, created by the Canadian developer duo 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, with Christie's auction house and mainstream media focusing on this new asset class. CryptoPunks, due to its "originality," was regarded as a "classical artifact" of digital art, and prices soared.

In August 2021, Visa announced it had purchased CryptoPunk #7610 for 49.5 ETH, calling it "an important asset for enterprises entering the NFT era." This move sparked widespread imitation and fueled a short-term frenzy of institutional NFT purchases. That same year, several Punk avatars fetched high prices at Sotheby's and Christie's, such as Punk #7523 (commonly known as "Covid Alien"), which sold for $11.7 million at Sotheby's, setting a record for a single Punk auction. After experiencing the most frenzied phase of the NFT market, CryptoPunks' total transaction volume once surpassed $3 billion, cementing its status as a "top blue-chip."

However, the peak did not last long. With the launch of 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. New entrants won larger user bases through flexible IP licensing, merchandise, and party events, while CryptoPunks, due to Larva Labs' non-commercial stance, prevented holders from commercializing their Punk IP, leading to its gradual marginalization in community activity and scalability.

This divergence ultimately led to Yuga Labs acquiring the CryptoPunks and Meebits IP in March 2022. Initially, the acquisition news had a positive impact on CryptoPunks' price, but the actual progress after the acquisition did not turn out to be as aggressive as the outside world had hoped. 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 winter in Web3, CryptoPunks gradually became a "respected but untouchable" existence.

Symbolic "De-financialization": Non-Profit Foundation Takes Over NFT Totem

The buyer in this sale, Infinite Node Foundation, is a non-profit organization established in 2025 by venture capitalist Micky Malka and curator Becky Kleiner. Its vision is to integrate 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; the foundation promises to build a permanent exhibition space in Palo Alto and will showcase the complete 10,000 CryptoPunks avatars for the first time, marking the first instance in NFT history where a project is curated in its entirety. At the same time, the museum will operate a real-time Ethereum node, emphasizing the "on-chain locality" and "immutability" of on-chain art.

NODE's language 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, researched, and narrated.

However, 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 seems 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 ApeCoin ecosystem. Selling Punks may be a rational sacrifice.

Who is Defining the "Artistic Nature" of NFTs?

Interestingly, the main thread behind this transaction is no longer valuation or floor price, but rather the status in art history.

NODE's involvement brings 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 topics of daily discussion in the crypto community.

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

From this perspective, NODE's emergence is a gentle arrangement; it does not attempt to "empower" CryptoPunks or change its original appearance, but rather places it within a systematic art preservation track. If the buyer were a commercial company, its operational logic would likely involve IP licensing, commercial collaborations, and traffic monetization. While these practices could bring short-term gains, they might dilute the symbolic nature of CryptoPunks as a hallmark of digital native culture.

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

NODE stated in its announcement: "This is not a transfer of ownership, but a liberation." As CryptoPunks becomes old money and a "collection," we may also be witnessing NFTs slowly turning from a high-volatility financial experiment to a low-frequency cultural form. The transformation of CryptoPunks serves as a mirror reflecting the anxieties of this industry.