Yuga Labs Lets Go of CryptoPunks, Will the Next Stop for NFT Blue Chips Be the Museum?

Here's the English translation: When CryptoPunks become old money and "museum collection", we may be witnessing NFT's slow transition from a high-volatility financial experiment to a low-frequency cultural form. **Author:** ChandlerZ, Foresight News **Cover:** Photo by Mo on Unsplash In May 2025, CryptoPunks were "sent to the museum". To be precise, Yuga Labs transferred the intellectual property of this project that pioneered the NFT art era to a non-profit organization called Infinite Node Foundation (NODE). The latter announced that this acquisition not only includes all CryptoPunks intellectual property but also comes with a $25 million cultural fund, and will drive an ambitious museum collaboration plan dedicated to incorporating CryptoPunks into global mainstream art institutions. They boldly declared: "This is not a transfer of ownership, but a liberation." Within hours of the announcement, CryptoPunks' floor price quickly rebounded to around 48 ETH, with trading volume also showing a significant increase. The once-dormant trading interface became active again, as if reminding people of the glory these pixel icons once carried. This blue-chip project, once considered the "Web3 totem", has entered a new chapter after experiencing multiple years of market peaks and emotional troughs. The foundation has also formed an advisory committee to manage CryptoPunks, with Larva Labs founders and artists Matt Hall and John Watkinson returning to manage the committee, alongside Wylie Aronow (Yuga Labs) and Erick Calderon (Art Blocks). Additionally, NODE will hire Natalie Stone as an advisor to support the NODE team during the transition period. But is this "return" a new beginning or the end of an era? [The rest of the translation follows the same approach, maintaining the original structure and translating all text while preserving HTML tags and specific terms as instructed.]

However, this transformation is not entirely romantic. Although the transaction amount has not been disclosed, the $25 million cultural donation fund established by NODE may hint at Yuga Labs' "profit-taking exit".

For the latter, selling CryptoPunks is more like a resource focus and financial optimization. Yuga launched a large-scale layoff in 2024 and clearly focused its core business on the Otherside virtual world and ApeCoin ecosystem, and selling Punks may be a rational letting go.

Who Defines the "Artistry" of Non-Fungible Tokens?

Interestingly, the main theme behind this transaction is no longer primarily about valuation or floor price, but about art historical status.

NODE's intervention has incorporated CryptoPunks into a more traditional cultural narrative: permanent museum collections, academic research, art curation... These words sound more like the responsibilities of MoMA or the British Museum, rather than daily discussions in the crypto community.

In fact, the trend of NFTs moving towards "museumification" has long existed. In 2023, Autoglyphs was collected and exhibited by London's Serpentine Gallery; Fidenza and Ringers began to be categorized by curatorial institutions as representatives of the "generative art movement"; Beeple's 'Everydays' became the starting point for NFT "museum entry" after being sold at Christie's for $69 million.

From this perspective, NODE's appearance is a gentle arrangement. It does not try to "empower" CryptoPunks or change its original appearance, but instead incorporates it into an institutional art preservation track. If the buyer were a commercial company, its operational logic would likely involve IP licensing, commercial collaborations, and traffic monetization, which might bring short-term benefits but could potentially dissolve CryptoPunks' symbolic status as a digital native cultural marker.

However, a new question arises: What is the next narrative for NFTs?

NODE stated in its announcement: "This is not a transfer of ownership, but a liberation." As CryptoPunks becomes old money and a "museum collection", we may be witnessing NFTs slowly turning from a high-volatility financial experiment to a low-frequency cultural form. And the transformation of CryptoPunks is like a mirror, reflecting the anxiety of this industry.

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