CryptoPunks are one of the most famous NFT collections, so let’s be clear about what really was the key to their international success. When we talk about CryptoPunks we are talking about 10,000 8-bit style images. 10,000 small punks each with their own characteristics.

Behind this project there are two, now famous, engineers: Matt Hall and John Watkinson. About five years ago, the duo developed a software application capable of generating hundreds of distinct avatars but without a real goal in mind.

The software had then generated the digital collectibles while the accompanying smart contract had provided the infrastructure for people to be able to mint them and potentially resell them.

So these little images were born as non-fungible tokens long before NFT became a familiar term. It can therefore be said that CryptoPunks were a real experiment that later became a piece of web 3.0 history.