Notable Events in 2022
23 January 2022
Larva Labs, via a pseudonymous wallet, started interacting with the CryptoPunksᵛ¹ wrapper. Over the course of a couple of days they wrapped 40, and sold 39 V1s for a total return of almost $700k USD.
First wrap (Jan-23-2022 06:16:57 PM +UTC) https://etherscan.io/tx/0x62ee0afa25470041e7cd7226ed0a2438eeab2f80e3e054a6974421baca826ea1
First sale (Jan-23-2022 07:44:44 PM +UTC) https://etherscan.io/tx/0x50a9c13a43d3684bf6b8060d16f2771ec7ebe5195ac3162cce22ebf24157f140
This information wasn't discovered until almost a week later.
24 January 2022
The Private Marketplace went live for CryptoPunksᵛ¹.
The very first private marketplace sale: 7.5 ETH
CryptoPunksᵛ¹ #1936
26 January 2022
Larva Labs tweets that they don't like CryptoPunksᵛ¹, however they make sure to specify that they own 1,000 of them.
Their tweet backfires on them and informs the community that an earlier version of CryptoPunks actually exists! Shortly thereafter Larva Labs issues an apology in their Discord server, announcing that they will be donating the proceeds to a rainforest charity.
29 January 2022
It was discovered that LarvaLabs, via a side wallet owned by cofounder John Wilkinson, had sold 39 Punks over the course of 3 days from 23-26 January 2022 via Opensea. The total proceeds from these sales reached ~270E or almost $700k USD at the time. It was widely seen as a major lapse of judgement on their part.
1 February 2022
CryptoPunksᵛ¹ biggest sale to date: 1000 ETH
CryptoPunksᵛ¹ #5905
2 February 2022
Discord announcement by Larva Labs apologizing for their actions.
Hi everyone, here’s our response to the “Wrapped Cryptopunks v1” issue. We made a mistake by interacting with this contract. We thought that by announcing our intentions and selling some of the tokens we would signal our distaste for it, and maybe others would follow. That was a bad decision. We regret it, and we apologize to the community.
Our original intention was to use the proceeds to buy Cryptopunks and Meebits. We’ve bought one Cryptopunk (https://www.larvalabs.com/cryptopunks/details/6601) and are going to be buying more until we’ve offset the proceeds of 210 ETH.
Separately, we’ve also decided to match that 210 ETH amount and donate it to the Rainforest Foundation. You can see our donation here: https://etherscan.io/tx/0x9ed6d8fb26ea570444fd84b997aba112d6cd196219dbd02b99acd1fba8e77a3d, and the foundation’s ETH address on their website https://rainforestfoundation.org/donate/cryptocurrency/. We feel like we’ve had a well-principled approach to the Cryptopunks project from the very beginning up until the moment we did this stupid thing. We’ve learned a hard lesson, but hope something good can come of it via this donation.
We originally didn’t go after the v1 project for copyright infringement of both the art and the Cryptopunks name, because we didn’t want to give it any additional attention, but now many Cryptopunks owners have called for us to take action, and we agree with them. Let there be no confusion about the legitimacy of this “v1” project. It has no right to use the art or the name. We will be taking appropriate steps in the coming days.
Please note proceeds totalled 270E, not 210E, as stated by Larva Labs.
So called 'Rainforest Punks'
39 of 1085 CryptoPunksᵛ¹ were sold by LL
3 February 2022
Cobie posts a video about the confusing situation:
7 February 2022
LL issues DMCA takedown to Opensea:
10 February 2022
The CryptoPunksᵛ¹ marketplace smart contract officially becomes decentralised after the developer renounces ownership of the contract.
The marketplace contract now operates independently on the Ethereum network and cannot be paused or modified. You can see the tx here: https://etherscan.io/tx/0x4bbf14e62e7f991b4bc2e41eee67789799a2457411c99690a1a1bcd2b7aea488
11 February 2022
CryptoPunksᵛ¹ Counter DMCA: https://discord.com/channels/890347836464582656/931237171883540480/941685106328870973
11 March 2022
Yuga Labs (the creators of the Bored Ape Yacht Club) announce they have acquired the Cryptopunks collection.
The 1085 CryptoPunksᵛ¹ owned by LarvaLabs were transferred to Yuga Labs as part of the deal. When asked about CryptoPunksᵛ¹ in the Yuga Labs discord, mods responded with this message:
18 March 2022
The CryptoPunksᵛ¹ collection gets relisted on Opensea!
23 March
Larva Labs transfer their final CryptoPunksᵛ¹ to Yuga Labs meaning they now own 1084 unwrapped and 1 wrapped Punk.
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