Introduction

CryptoPunks is a collection of non-fungible tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. The project was launched in June 2017 by the Larva Labs studio. The experimental project was inspired by London's punk scenes, the cyberpunk movement, and electronic music artists Daft Punk. The cryptocurrency blockchain project was an inspiration for the ERC-721 standard for NFTs and the modern cryptocurrency movement, which has since become a part of the cryptocurrency and decentralised finance ecosystems on multiple blockchains.

There are 10,000 unique CryptoPunks (6,039 male and 3,840 female), all of which are made digitally scarce through the use of blockchain technology. Each was algorithmically generated through computer code and therefore no two characters are exactly alike, with some traits being rarer than others. They were originally released for free and could be claimed by anyone with an Ethereum wallet. The only costs to claim a CryptoPunk during their initial launch were Ethereum (ETH) "gas fees", which at the time were negligible due to little use of the Ethereum blockchain and little knowledge of the project as well.

Some features and character types are rarer than others. While many newer development projects often sample hundreds of possible traits, the CryptoPunks project was not that complex. Most of the 10,000 total punks are human, but there are also three special types: Zombie (88), Ape (24) and Alien (9). Apart from the character type, there were a potential 87 additional attributes.

Methodology

This dashboard has been done with the intention to firstly provide an overview of the Cryptopunk NFT sales metrics such as sales, volume, average daily price and cumulative numbers, as well as a selection of the top 10 wallets in term of profits from NFT trading. The final approach consisted of obtain the top 10 wallets in terms of accumulated NFTs.

For the first approach, I have used the Ethereum NFT table available on Flispide Crypto called ‘ethereum.core.ez_nft_sales‘ and I have filtered the transactions by project_name = 'cryptopunks'. Then, I have calculated the daily aforementioned metrics.

For the second approach, the code is more complex. Apart from the first step used on the first approach, I have taken into account each buyer_address and seller_address by filtering transactions where nft_address = '0xb47e3cd837ddf8e4c57f05d70ab865de6e193bbb' and price_usd > 0 in order to catch only Cryptopunks valid sales. Then, I have merged both results selecting only those rows where the buyer_address was the same as the seller_address and the nft_id was the same in both cases. Finally, I have calculated how much each user paid for their buys and how much obtained with their sales. The final calculation was compute the difference between the total gain and the total cost.

The final approach was computed exactly as the previous second one but in this case, taking into account only the number of buys and sells and obtaining the number of NFTs each wallet are holding currently because they don’t sell yet.

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Results

Key insights

• The highest daily numbers were registered from July to September
• More than 14k sales has been executed
• The higher volume numbers were registered during the second half of 2021
• The cumulative volume moved so far surpassed the 2.5B USD
• The top wallet have gained almost 300M USD, while the second one almost 250M. The rest of the top 10 have gained less than 100M but the quantities are also so good.
• There is no correlation between the number of NFTs used and the amount of gains
• There is one wallet that has been able to accumulate a total of 185 NFTs so far. Another wallet that has accumulated 61 and the rest less than 36

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Sources:

[1]. 10-things-to-know-about-CryptoPunks [2]. Cryptopunks app [3]. Cryptopunks wiki

In this first overview, we can see how the major impact of CryptoPunks NFTs on the market was registered during 2021.

In terms of sales, the highest daily sales numbers were registered from July to September, reaching numbers as higher as 350 sales. So far, more than 14k sales has been executed.

Looking at the daily volume sold, we can see how in this case, the higher volume numbers were registered during the second half of 2021, registering numbers above 100M USD in a day. The cumulative volume moved so far surpassed the 2.5B USD.

Finally, the the average daily price of a Cryptopunk varied over time, reaching the highest numbers again during the second half of 2021. It is curious that on October 28th 2021, the highest average price was done reaching more than 48M USD.

This two charts above represents the top 10 wallets with the highest profits so far by trading CryptoPunks NFTs. In the left side, we can see how the top wallet have gained almost 300M USD, while the second one almost 250M. The rest of the top 10 have gained less than 100M but the quantities are also so good.

On the right side, we can see the number of NFTs each wallet used to achieved their profits. As we can see, the ranking is not the same as on the other chart, saying us that there is no correlation between the number of NFTs used and the amount of gains. It is clear that the gains also depends on other factors such us the rarity of the NFT. It is to say that one of the top 10 wallet reach almsot 50M in gains only with a single NFT used.

Finally, this chart shows the top 10 wallets that have been accumulating more CryptoPunks NFTs. As we can see, there is one wallet that has been able to accumulate a total of 185 NFTs so far. Another wallet that has accumulated 61 and the rest less than 36.

In this case, I have not computed the price of each NFTs in order to see how much could be on their balances but it could be a good approach for the future in order to know which of these wallets are holding more value suming the possible price of each NFT holded.