Resurgence of CryptoPunksᵛ¹

With the recent meteoric rise and attention on historical NFT’s, CryptoPunksᵛ¹ has piqued the interest of 'NFT archaeologists', collectors and speculators. Although there has always been a small group who have known of CryptoPunksᵛ¹, only recently has the collection come to fame.
To be clear, CryptoPunksᵛ¹ are the original and first contract created by Larvalabs and preceded their famous Cryptopunks NFTs. They are identical to their 'v2' brothers and thanks to a new wrapper they can be wrapped as ERC-721s and safely traded on popular NFT marketplaces.
They are not derivatives, nor copies nor fakes.
The CryptoPunksᵛ¹ contract immutably exists on the blockchain and their provenance is without dispute.
For a long time v1's went under the radar, only traded sporadically in private transactions. In early 2017 @0xfoobar created a 'wrapper contract', a way to wrap the tokens into ERC-721 compliant tokens and patch over the contract bug. The wrapper imparted a slight change to the image (adding a reddish-orange ribbon in the top left) but leaving the core image intact. More recently an improved wrapper was developed by @FrankPoncelet and @simo_eth to match a dedicated marketplace for CryptoPunksᵛ¹.
With the development of this marketplace and wrapper, the stage is set for the Punks to make their comeback.
CryptoPunksᵛ¹ owners love art and community. They are positive and welcoming. v1's have been a polarising topic with some wishing they never existed and others loving that they do. Their history and place in the CryptoPunks story cannot be disputed or erased.
The blockchain cannot be reversed.
Per @nftstrategies in this Twitter thread,
What we are buying is attention, in the form of a story. The buyers (of) #v1Punks aren’t challenging the power of Larva Labs, we raided their dumpster and found precious treasure. This real, indelible token has one of the best stories of all NFTs and true historic provenance.

New Wrapper & Marketplace

The new wrapper contract, which offers improvements upon previous iterations, will be supported by a dedicated fee-less marketplace allowing users the opportunity to safely trade and interact with their CryptoPunksᵛ¹.
How does this wrapper contract work, you wonder? Well, to wrap, you have to safely nestle your ERC-20 Punk into the wrapper contract. It spits out a lovely ERC-721 with complete metadata and is then tradable without vulnerability via popular marketplaces. The wrapper colours the background of your Punk by default in a soft purple hue and the marketplace will display different colours depending on the current status of the Punk, just like Larva Labs' CryptoPunksᵛ².
Note: CryptoPunks don't actually have a background colour as the art is transparent, so by adding one via the wrapper we aren't modifying the original art, merely differentiating v1's from their v2 brothers to avoid confusion. Of course, users can unwrap their Punk at any time and receive the original, untainted art.
Users can purchase, bid and sell Punks on all popular marketplaces.
HYPE SOUNDTRACK FOR CRYPTOPUNKSᵛ¹