Giving life to NFTs, Punk #4156
When talking about NFTs and crypto art the first thing that comes to mind are the CryptoPunks. They have defined the current NFT standard and have become the most valuable art pieces on the blockchain. Even Jay-Z has bought one. They’re being sold for millions at top level art auction houses. But that’s no the most interesting part, let me explain.
Profile picture NFTs and pseudonymous accounts
Some NFTs collections like the CryptoPunks use a kind of art that can be used for social media profile pictures. People are using those to display belonging to a group or display wealth in Twitter or Discord. This has lead also to the creation of pseudonymous accounts from scratch to give a life to those Punks. One of my favorite example is Punk #4156. He’s an Ape Punk (a very rare type of Punk) and he’s become a NFT influencer.
Living off a NFT
He’s been enhancing the image of it and people started creating derivative art of it. This, as stated by him, is just making bigger his figure. Every derivative art is expanding the history of the punk. One of the most notorious derivative was a beautiful piece from Beeple.
But that was just the starting point. This ape is also an entrepreneur. He’s creating a generative art NFT collection called nouns. He’s even creating a DAO for them. My question is, as the project is being created by this Punk, is this project somehow inheriting some of its value? It’s a derivative project? Maybe this one is not so clear but let’s see some other examples because this ape is really smart.
He’s been playing with minting some NFTs. Some of them are clever, like the punk TIME magazine cover. He’s leveraging his figure to mint memes and pieces of art. The piece that made me write this article is the meme where crypto investors were going to work at McDonalds that started a bunch of memes.
The McDonalds NFT
That was it. He put the McDonald’s hat and minted it. Some hours later it was sold for 7 Eth. No one knows if NFTs are in a bubble but anyways it’s mind blowing. Not the fact of selling an NFT for that price but the fact that he’s creating a valuable brand over one punk in a pseudonymous manner. What a genius.
The McDonald’s meme also brings us some insights about copyrights infractions. A pseudonymous is infringing the copyrights of McDonalds and making money of it but, could they even do something about it? Blockchain cannot be stopped and he’s no one, how they would go after him?
Creating an open crypto franchise
Like if all of this were not enough. There’s more, the provenance vs copyrights model. Punk #4156 reflects over the fact of where the value of the NFT sale comes from: from its provenance. If you think about it, somehow that meme is a part of the punk. It’s the same as when an artist sells an exclusive piece with the difference that brings crypto: embedded markets. That brings us to the conclusion that somehow those pieces are extensions of the value of the punk. For me, this is like creating a franchise out of the punk.
What are we going to see in the future?
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