8liens: The Turbulent Feud Between a Group of CryptoPunks OGs and TreasureDAO
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8liens: The Turbulent Feud Between a Group of CryptoPunks OGs and TreasureDAO
Behind the viral sensation of "Alien" lies a surprising backstory with the "Magic Monkey"...
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsBy Cookie
After nearly seven months of waiting, all 10,000 8liens have finally landed on the Ethereum mainnet. In just over three days, 8liens' trading volume has surpassed 3,000 ETH, successfully unleashing an "Alien Storm."
Currently ranked fifth on OpenSea’s weekly leaderboard, 8liens is closing in on OwlDAO.
The "Alien Storm" has weathered its trials and shows no sign of slowing down. During the initial whitelist mint, "paper hands" launched their first attack, driving the floor price down to 0.1 ETH—but it quickly rebounded above 0.2 ETH. After public sale concluded, paper hands struck again with even greater force, briefly pushing prices below 0.1 ETH. Despite the heavier dump, recovery was surprisingly swift—within about half an hour, the floor price had fully recovered.
The aliens’ resistance to paper hands is maxed out.
Currently, 8liens maintains a floor price above 0.5 ETH—a success that has surprised many. Indeed, we haven’t seen such an Old School project with such strong upward momentum in quite some time.
To Master Old School, You Need Background
Does it have a token? A game? A metaverse? 8liens answers: No, no, and still no.
Then what does it have? Free mint, zero royalties, CC0—and that's it. The 8liens team defines the project purely as “NFT art.”
As shown in the image above, the team also stated that 8liens drew inspiration from CryptoPunks, and they’ve demonstrated their respect for the OGs through action—the team’s only source of income is keeping 10% of the supply for themselves, plus another 10% reserved for future development. Additionally, the team plans to build their own marketplace, just like CryptoPunks did.
Positioning the project so squarely as Old School “NFT art” means the strategy must be hardcore—only two pillars matter: left hand “art quality,” right hand “team background.” There’s hardly a third tool available. Art quality is subjective, and since 8liens hasn’t revealed full artwork yet, it’s too early to judge. But when it comes to “team background,” 8liens is solid.
Two advisors of the 8liens team, Bharat Krymo and NooNe0x.eth, are members of 6529 Capital—the investment arm of renowned NFT collector 6529. The three founders—punkvandelay, Debussy.eth, and Scalynelson—are all early collectors of CryptoPunks. The power of these OG connections is evident in 8liens’ blue-chip ownership rate.
8liens’ blue-chip ownership rate and holdings of select blue-chip addresses
Moreover, the top three holders—darren.eth, 0x4c0dbe2bfa35c379788d0d5b1d7f2e749945509f, and 0x84e01061fa6b69c1629e3578d988eb20cb73a677 (holding 109, 99, and 68 respectively)—haven’t listed a single 8lien for sale. Truly diamond-handed. Notably, Steve Aoki has also acquired 10 8liens.
On the artist front, lead artist Unstable Kido hails from South Korea and began creating NFT art in early 2021. His works have achieved over 250 ETH in combined sales on Foundation and OpenSea. Additionally, 16 unique 1/1 8liens were created by 16 different artists, including gremplin (founder of CrypToadz), Bryan Brinkman, Alpha Centauri Kid, and Hackatao—truly a constellation of stars.
Without such deep roots, it would have been nearly impossible to elevate an Old School-style project to this level. Up to this point, it may seem rather dry—an ordinary case of "attention economics." But here's where things get interesting: 8liens originally planned to launch on Arbitrum, only officially announcing the move to Ethereum mainnet in late July. This brings us to the tangled history between 8liens and TreasureDAO, Arbitrum’s famous Loot derivative ecosystem.
From Smoliens to 8liens, From Arbitrum to Mainnet
At the beginning of this article, we mentioned “nearly seven months of waiting.” Let’s turn back the clock to the start of the year.
Back then, the flagship NFT project on Arbitrum—TreasureDAO’s Smol Brains—was selling for over $10,000 at peak prices, riding high in both value and popularity. The success of Smol Brains sparked a wave of derivative projects starting with “Smol,” which leveraged its popularity to breeze past cold-start challenges and rapidly gather attention. 8liens was one of them—and at that time, it was called Smoliens.
By the end of February, the honeymoon between Smol Brains and 8liens was over. The core issue was a clash in vision. 8liens wanted to become a CryptoPunks-like project—zero royalties, with its own dedicated marketplace—directly contradicting TreasureDAO’s model. TreasureDAO operates its own NFT marketplace, Trove, supports derivative projects by listing them there, collects royalties, and redistributes revenue to sustain both itself and its ecosystem. Royalties are essential to TreasureDAO. To make matters worse, repeated delays in launching Trove made 8liens unwilling to wait any longer.
TreasureDAO felt betrayed, accusing 8liens of having no intention to contribute to the ecosystem. The two sides clashed fiercely during an AMA session, where 8liens denied being a true Smol derivative and even declared, “We don’t care about your token ($MAGIC).”
After that, the split became final. Smoliens rebranded to its current name—8liens. Then, market conditions shifted into bear territory. In June, TreasureDAO finally launched Trove, but performance was underwhelming—total trading volume remains around 160 ETH. NFT prices have fallen far from their January highs, and the $MAGIC token has dropped from a peak of $6 to below $1. Meanwhile, 8liens fell into prolonged silence, sharing little beyond preview images on Twitter.
Not until late July did the 8liens team finally reveal in Discord that they considered Arbitrum “not mature enough” and decided to launch on the Ethereum mainnet instead. Today, 8liens’ floor price has already surpassed that of Smol Brains. While diverging paths made separation inevitable, people still wonder about the “what ifs”—in an alternate universe, if Smoliens had stayed within the TreasureDAO ecosystem, listed on Trove, could they have achieved greatness together?
“Wondering about ‘what ifs’ is the emptiest kind of pain.”… Perhaps it’s better this way—each moving forward on their own path.
Conclusion
Within the 8liens community, I’ve found holders whose mindset matches the project’s Old School ethos—they genuinely love these pixelated “aliens,” earned whitelists by writing stories, and after minting, remain unfazed by price fluctuations.
We’ve grown used to rushing in, used to flipping. But do we still remember the simple joy and emotion of collecting a small picture we liked as a profile picture? No matter how long the aliens’ story continues, I hope they bring back just a little more of that “obsession,” that “naivety”...
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