It all started when I first interviewed LarvaLabs' co-founders Matt Hall and John Watkinson about CryptoPunks back in march of 2018. Matt & John showed me a sort of "visualizer" they created to illustrate how the Punks were constructed by their Generator code. It seemed to be a looping animated-gif that showed new traits appearing and replacing one another every few seconds.
[ Excerpt from the full-length Documentary film "CryptoPunks Origins" ]
While the visualizer Matt & John showed me was pretty cool, I remember immediately thinking there could be a totally different way to show how Punks were constructed that would not only be just as cool visually (perhaps even cooler,) it could also have the added bonus of a truly killer feature: it would be INTERACTIVE...
The idea I had was borne of the experience I gained working as a freelance iPhone App Developer between
the years of 2009 and 2016.
Making iPhone Apps required using IDE's
such as Xcode and
Appcode, both of which
had these handy tools that let you "debug the
View Hierarchy." Essentially this meant that you could sort of "freeze" the execution of your App in the iOS
Simulator during runtime, and "EXPLODE" its Interface and spin it around in 3D space. This allowed
you to closely examine the various components of your app's Interface-layout, which was extremely helpful because some
screens had literally dozens of elements in them, many of which were nested within one another, which meant that things
could get really cluttered and hard to manage and troubleshoot.
The View Hierarchy Debugger looked like this:
Knowing that Punks were created by literally stacking layers of attributes one on top of another, it was clear that
implementing the visualization technique employed by Xcode's Debugger would work really nicely to show how Punks
were constructed.
In addition, making things interactive by providing the user with a Slider, so that they could zoom-in, rotate, and "explode"
the view precisely to the degree they wanted to, absolutely seemed like the way to go. There's just no substitute for
giving users complete control and freedom to explore a project at their own pace, so that they're really able to take their time,
reflect, and ponder the results - as opposed to being forced to sit back and passively watch some pre-recorded animation over and
over again. It's basically all about ENGAGEMENT.
Only question was: would doing all this be worth the effort?
You have to remember: it was early 2018. There were maybe 200 people on the entire planet that owned Punks at that time
(I'm obviously just throwing out a number here which I of course don't mean literally, simply saying there were very very few
people who knew or cared about Punks at the time.)
Besides, I had at least a dozen ideas for other projects - NFT projects - that I was really keen on creating, some of
which I had already started working on prior to interviewing Matt & John. (I'm definitely hoping to release some of them in 2024.)
And of course - most importantly, I had several videos I was editing. And that was really my main mission: to create a film or TV-show
that told the story of this new Art-movement, and thereby spread the word, educate people and really help elevate the entire Space
and all the Artists working within it.
And so I decided to put this "3D-Viewer" idea on the back-burner and focus on all the other ideas and projects I had already begun
working on (little knowing of course how the plot of the Punks' story would thicken...)
The one thing that sorta kept bothering me though - as the months passed, was the business of CryptoPunks' so-called "hidden attributes".
These were attributes that were supposedly there - but could never actually be seen because they were liteally
covered up and hidden by other attributes that sat on top of them.
Here's a classic example of this phenomena: the lovely lady that is
CryptoPunk 1489 supposedly has an
Earring - but we can't see it because the Wild White Hair attribute is covering it up.
This both bothered and intrigued me - especially because this phenomena was everywhere.
For example, check out these next two dudes:
• Punk 3810 supposedly has three
attributes: a Hoodie, a Medical Mask, and a Smile. Except
you can't actually see the Smile because the Medical Mask is covering it up.
So how do we know that smile is really there?
Meanwhile, Punk 8369, a very similar
Hoodie Punk, also has a Smile, and this time you can see it because
it's not covered up by anything.
This is really nice for two reasons:
1. You don't have to doubt for even one second whether or not this Punk truly does have a
Smile - it's right there in plain view, while with a masked-punk you just have to doubt,
cause it's simply not visibly there.
2. Being that you can actually see 8369's Smile, you can truly enjoy it.
While that second point may seem completely obvious, it absolutely still needs to be stated. Because think about it:
can you truly enjoy a Smile you can not see?
I would ultimately not be able to.
And mind you: I love Conceptual Art. So I could absolutely enjoy the idea of the smile being there
without having to see it. I would truly be perfectly happy just picturing it in my mind's eye, sitting there, smiling
at me from ear to ear behind his mask - and I'd probably even give myself extra credit for being so "Conceptual,"
"Sophisticated," and "Mature" so as to not need to be visually spoon-fed said smile.
And it could all go really great - up until the moment when I'd lose my patience and just wanna see that damn smile! 😎
Cause sooner or later that moment will arrive. Every once in a while, it'll be there:
"Show me that damn pixel!" 😎
Obviously we're all built different, so opinions may vary on this, but I think we can all agree that the desire some
people may have to see everything their Punk has to offer is certainly a legitimate one.
Interestingly, over time, I came to realize that this desire was exapnding and morphing so that I now wanted to see not just
Hidden Attributes, but also the EYES of every single
Punk out there...
In other words, any Punk that donned glasses, be they 3D Glasses, Classic Shades, VR
Glasses, etc. - I wanted to be able to peek behind them and see that Punk's eyes. If only because it was
impossible to do.
This added yet more fuel to the fire...
"So are we just never gonna be able to see these hidden-attributes?" I found myself thinking.
"Cause if we're not, how can we even know that they're truly there to begin with?"
This second question actually gets pretty "deep" if you think about it. And that's because neither
the Punks' images, their Metadata, nor the source-code that generated them in the first place were
ever made available in a publicly verifiable manner. Not on-chain, not off-chain - not in any
way that allowed anyone to confirm the Punks' data.
Which means that all we had to go by was the master image of
all 10,000 Punks, and LarvaLabs' website which detailed which attributes each Punk had.
Supposedly 😎
In other words, if you wanted to somehow verify that Punk 3810 (the Hoodie Punk with the Medical Mask
from up top) really did have a Smile
underneath his Medical Mask, well there was just no way to do that. LarvaLabs was the only
source of truth on this matter, so you simply had to trust the (100% centralized)
information they provided about 3810.
To put a finer point on it: if LarvaLabs were to suddenly come out and announce: "hey we checked our
records and it turns out we made a mistake: 3810 actually does NOT have a Smile, it
has a Frown!" - well there'd just be no way you could argue with them about that either.
The reason this matters is because when collectors - and algorithms - try to determine a Punk's rarity
and $ market value, they take into account not only which attributes that Punk has, but also the number
of attributes it has. So one attribute more or less can literally mean tens of thousands of dollars
in price difference. Which is why it might be kinda nice to truly see and visually verify the existence
of all reported attributes.
Please note: in no way
am I implying that Larvalabs may have been untruthful about their reporting of the Punks' attributes. Of course not.
I would never say that - absolutely not.
Nor is any of this even meant as a critique of the project. Because remember, this was very early on, it
was an experimental project, and there was no real money in it (Punks were literally given away for free to anyone who
would bother to come and claim them.)
Back then, the focus was much more on "will this even work?", and none of us had any
idea things like "number of attributes" would really come to matter as much as they eventually did.
But in retrospect, it seems pretty clear that if someone wanted to make the argument that from a purely
cold, objective, data-driven sort of perspective, this inability to verify any information regarding the Punks' attributes
is at the very least "theoretically problematic," it'd be pretty hard to argue with them.
Obviously, times have changed and standards and expectations have changed - and it just so happened that in
LarvaLabs' very next project, Autoglyphs, Matt &
John took a giant leap forward that actually specifically addressed the on-chainness (and thus veracity)
of the Art they were making. And that became a Very Big Deal. It helped contribute to what more or less
became the new standard. But as far as Punks are concerned, this business of their hidden-attributes remains
to this day a sort of "Black Hole" of knowledge.
(It should also be noted that the August, 2021
"On-Chain CryptoPunks"
project, originally spearheaded by SnowFro and
Deafbeef, which finally did permanentaly place
the Punks' attributes on-chain, does not resolve the hidden-attributes issue in any way shape or form. Because
all it did was immutably record on the blockchain that very same data which had never been publicly verified to
begin with.
That said, from a purely nerdy perspective, the clever logic and efficient compression schemes utilized in that on-chain
"CryptoPunksData" smart-contract, and just the whole
initiative, was and remains super-freaking-cool.)
Bottom line to all this is that over time, while the "veracity" of the "Hidden Attributes" bothered me less and
less - if only because I knew Matt and John to be super-honest people, and because of how early the project was,
those "Hidden Attributes" still remained a point of intrigue. But in a FUN way. They were a sort-of
ever-present curiousity, a thing I would find myself coming back to time and time again over the years, and WONDER
about...
Many moons have passed since I first sat with Matt & John and that certain spark-of-an-idea went off in my head.
And for all these years, that spark continued to burn...
The Punk community has grown 10-fold and more since those early days of 2017-18.
It has become a diverse, robust, and fun group of smart, interesting characters from various backgrounds, living literally
all over the world.
And many of them absolutely love and truly appreciate just nerding out about Punks.
Being that Punks have always been Builders, we've now naturally seen any number of projects launched
by members of the Punks community which highlight and feed-into this love-meets-nerdiness sentiment.
In 2023 legendary OG Punk-claimer niftynaut
launched Punks.wtf, a Web-App that gives us numerous
and fascinating insights into the myriad colors that comprise the various Punks.
Palettes, color-combinations, pixel-counts, "Twins", downloadable animated-gifs -
Punks.wtf is chock-full of
delicious features and data, presented both beautifully and elegantly.
Meanwhile, Data Super-Scientist Pat Doyle created
not just one, but two web-apps: Punks.JunkDrawer.wtf and
Punkverse, both of which use great
graphics to show transaction histories and Punk provenance-journeys through the years.
Check it out!
Finally, Gwendall's
Punkmaker project throws
caution to the wind by tossing the rule-book out the window and letting users create truly unique, zany, and
downright "impossible" Punks.
Wanna see a Female Ape?
Sure, why not?
Wanna give her Clown Green Hair, a Cigarette, a Gold Chain and a Beanie?
Right this way.
Wanna use AR to embed her over-top-of the Mona-freakin'-Lisa in the Louvre?
What?! Have you no respect? Do you wanna get arrested? What are you, some sort of PUNK???
With all these wonderful projects arriving, and with an active, adventurous, and super-engaged community always
hungry for more insights into Punks, it was clearly time to dust-off my old 2018 idea and breathe life into it.
At last.
The time to reveal the EYES of our Punks, as well as the
mysteries and secrets of our Punks' never-before-seen
Hidden Attributes, has come...
I hope you enjoy engaging with this project as much as I did creating it. I hope it gives you even greater insights
into and a renewed appreciation for Punks. And more than anything, I hope it inspires you to always push the
envelope, innovate, and thereby forever embrace your inner Punk!
-Sherone
February 14, 2024
