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

As CryptoPunks become old money, becoming a "collection", we may also be witnessing NFTs slowly turning from a high Fluctuation financial experiment to a low-frequency cultural style.

Written by: ChandlerZ, Foresight News

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

To be precise, it was Yuga Labs that transferred the intellectual property of this project, which pioneered the era of NFT art, to a non-profit organization called Infinite Node Foundation (NODE). The latter announced that this acquisition includes not only the full intellectual property of CryptoPunks but also a $25 million cultural fund, and will promote 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 about 48 ETH, and the trading volume also 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 once regarded "Web3 totem" blue-chip project has entered 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) participating in the committee. 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 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 everything from Christie's auction house to mainstream media focusing on this new asset class. CryptoPunks, due to their "originality" status, were regarded as the "classical relics" of digital art, leading to a surge in prices.

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 was sold at Sotheby's for 11.7 million dollars, setting a record for the auction of a single Punk. 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 yet silent limitations. The rising stars won a larger user base through flexible IP licensing, peripheral products, and party events, while CryptoPunks, due to Larva Labs' non-commercial stance, rendered holders unable to commercially utilize their Punk IP, gradually marginalizing it in terms of community activity and scalability.

This split culminated in the acquisition of CryptoPunks and Meebits IP by Yuga Labs in March 2022. The initial news of the acquisition had a positive impact on the price of CryptoPunks, but the actual post-acquisition move was not as aggressive as expected. CryptoPunks are not massively commercialized in Yuga's hands, on the one hand, it avoids vulgar IP generalization; But on the other hand, it has not been able to build an active ecosystem like BAYC. In the past two years when Web3 has entered the cold winter, CryptoPunks has gradually become a "respected but untouched" existence.

Symbolic "De-financialization", Non-profit Foundation Takes Over NFT Totem

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 engage in research, exhibitions, and archiving.

According to NODE, this acquisition is not a traditional merger and acquisition. The foundation has committed to building a permanent exhibition space in Palo Alto, where it will showcase the complete 10,000 CryptoPunks avatars for the first time. This is the first time in NFT history that a project is curated in its entirety. At the same time, the exhibition hall will run 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 advocate for 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 speculative commodity, but rather 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 suggest Yuga Labs' "profit-taking exit."

For the latter, selling CryptoPunks is more like a resource focus and financial optimization. Yuga launched 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 divestment.

Who is defining the "artistic nature" of NFTs?

Interestingly, the main line behind this transaction is, to some extent, no longer about valuation or floor price, but rather about 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 topics of daily discussion in the crypto community.

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

From this perspective, the emergence of NODE is a mild arrangement. It does not attempt to "empower" CryptoPunks nor does it change its original appearance, but instead incorporates it into a systematic track of artistic protection. If the buyer this time is a commercial company, its operational logic is likely to be IP licensing, commercial co-branding, and traffic monetization. Although these practices may bring short-term gains, they could potentially dilute the symbolic significance 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, becoming a "collection," we may also be witnessing NFTs slowly turning from a high fluctuation financial experiment to a low-frequency cultural style. The transformation of CryptoPunks is like a mirror, reflecting the anxieties of this industry.