
Newsletter #212: Stewardship
This week’s featured collector is Benson
Benson collects Ethereum NFTs and they love their collection of Animal Punks. Check it out at lazy.com/benson
How do you feel about brands pairing physical goods with NFTs?
Last week’s poll suggests a largely receptive audience for NFT-linked physical products: a clear majority (60 %) are outright excited, indicating that the concept already resonates beyond novelty value. Another fifth describe themselves as curious—open to the idea but likely waiting to see practical execution—while an equal 20 % remain skeptical, flagging trust, utility or hype concerns that brands will need to address. Notably, no respondents feel indifferent or uncertain, which implies that the topic commands attention and opinion rather than apathy. Overall, sentiment skews positive but not uncritically so, signaling room for adoption provided projects can deliver tangible benefits and mitigate common doubts.
CryptoPunks Become Cultural Artifact
Yuga Labs has transferred stewardship of CryptoPunks to the Infinite Node Foundation (NODE), a newly formed, non-profit dedicated to preserving and exhibiting internet-native art. Although financial terms were not disclosed, NODE now holds the intellectual-property rights while Yuga retains its own Punk NFTs and the same licence as every other collector. Framed by NODE as “an evergreen, mission-driven endowment,” the move pivots CryptoPunks away from commercial tie-ins and toward long-term cultural stewardship. The timing is pragmatic: secondary-market volumes on legacy PFP projects have cooled, and the royalty model that once underwrote Web3 brands has eroded. Under a non-profit, price stability can be interpreted as cultural longevity rather than lost momentum.
NODE’s mandate rests on three pillars—preservation, community and expansion. On the technical side, the foundation will run its own Ethereum node to guarantee on-chain permanence, while advisory board members Matt Hall and John Watkinson (Larva Labs), Wylie Aronow (Yuga Labs) and Erick Calderon (Art Blocks) provide curatorial and infrastructural guidance. Community engagement will extend beyond Crypto Twitter: NODE plans to open a permanent gallery in Palo Alto and launch “Infinite Images: The Art of Algorithms,” the first full-collection exhibition of all 10,000 Punks. The goal is to position the project—whose lifetime sales of $3.07 billion already outpace any living contemporary artist—as a case study for scholars and museums exploring digital provenance.
For collectors, nothing changes day-to-day: ownership rights and IP licences remain intact. What does change is the narrative arc. A project once championed for eye-popping resale values (one Punk sold for $23 million worth of ETH in 2022) is now presented as a landmark in algorithmic art history. NODE argues this realignment corrects a “cultural disconnect” that left CryptoPunks off traditional rankings despite another $317 million in secondary sales so far in 2025. Whether that scholarly framing eventually feeds back into market demand is uncertain, but institutional backing does add reputational capital at a moment when NFT sentiment is subdued.
Yuga, for its part, can refocus on growth-oriented properties such as Bored Apes and Otherside without carrying the expectation to monetise a mature brand. Collectors gain a stewardship model designed to outlast price cycles, and the broader art world receives a well-funded laboratory for integrating blockchain-native work into existing canons. If NODE succeeds, CryptoPunks could become the rare PFP project that graduates from speculative asset to museum-grade cultural artifact—setting a constructive precedent for how aging NFT collections might secure their legacy.
Learn more at NODE.
How do you feel about CryptoPunks’ move to NODE?
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