Didn't expect PunkStrategy to actually take off
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Didn't expect PunkStrategy to actually take off
A 50 million market cap golden dog suddenly appears on the Ethereum mainnet?
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Cookie
On the Ethereum mainnet, a token named $PNKSTR has surged approximately 160% over the past two days, briefly surpassing a $50 million market cap and becoming a striking highlight amid an otherwise extremely dry on-chain market. Currently, the token has slightly pulled back, with a market cap of around $43 million.
The full name of $PNKSTR is "PunkStrategy," which creates a circular flywheel between NFTs and tokens through trading CryptoPunks NFTs. Each $PNKSTR transaction incurs a 10% fee, with 8% allocated to the protocol. Once enough fees accumulate in the protocol's treasury to purchase a CryptoPunk, the contract automatically buys a floor-priced CryptoPunk and lists it for sale at 1.2 times the purchase price. Upon successful sale, the proceeds in ETH are used to buy back and burn $PNKSTR.
To date, $PNKSTR's fee revenue has approached 700 ETH. The protocol has completed full buy-sell cycles for 12 CryptoPunks, resulting in the burning of approximately 2.8% of the total token supply.
Fundamentally, this has become the hottest topic recently within the NFT community, widely discussed among active NFT KOLs and Twitter users who hold CryptoPunks. Interestingly, @waleswoosh, a prominent NFT influencer, tweeted on September 15—when $PNKSTR’s market cap dipped below $10 million—that $PNKSTR would soon die out. A week later, however, $PNKSTR went on a massive rally.
The developer behind $PNKSTR is no unknown entity but rather TokenWorks, a group composed of long-standing, active on-chain developers who have consistently launched various on-chain projects. TokenWorks’ official Twitter account follows only five people, each a well-known veteran in the on-chain space—for example, @surfcoderepeat, who previously created Lotus on Arbitrum and FrenPet on Base.
Prior to $PNKSTR, TokenWorks’ most famous and successful project was the “black hole token” $O on the Shape network, which even received a promotional tweet from beeple.
Before launching $PNKSTR, TokenWorks had already released 10 on-chain projects, each featuring unique on-chain mechanics.
Following the success of $PNKSTR, on September 20, TokenWorks launched NFTStrategy, introducing tokens tied to five additional NFT projects: BAYC, Pudgy Penguins, Moonbirds, Meebits, and CryptoDickbutts. The mechanism remains identical to $PNKSTR, except that of the 10% transaction fee, 1% is paid as royalty to the respective NFT collection owner and another 1% is used to buy and burn $PNKSTR.
All five new tokens are performing similarly, none exceeding a $3 million market cap. However, in the past 24 hours, the token linked to Meebits has seen the highest trading volume—approximately $1.6 million—and currently holds a slight lead in market cap.
When NFTStrategy first launched, a sniper protection mechanism was implemented: the initial purchase fee started at 95% and decreased by 1% per minute until stabilizing at 10%. Due to heavy early buying, the protocol rapidly accumulated sufficient funds to purchase floor-priced NFTs from the corresponding collections, creating arbitrage opportunities. One user, 0xa3d297423b17a3894dddd582dc41ff20e237ab75, netted 181.706 ETH (about $813,400) within three hours by trading 10 BAYCs, 7 Moonbirds, 5 Pudgy Penguins, and 4 Meebits.
This was not due to a contract vulnerability but because the team did not implement automated operations. CryptoPunks has an on-chain marketplace, making the NFT buy-sell process for $PNKSTR slightly different. Without an on-chain market, the new tokens can only guarantee that the purchased NFT will be acquired via the contract, but anyone can call the contract to trigger a specific purchase.
Possibly due to team overload, TokenWorks did not deploy bots to ensure immediate purchases when funds reached the minimum threshold. However, this issue doesn’t seem to have affected the performance of the new tokens, and @0xQuit, VP of Yuga Labs’ blockchain division, stated he has personally deployed a bot to address the problem.
Today, TokenWorks announced that starting this Friday, they will launch a new NFTStrategy token every day for one week. Tokens for seven projects—Chromie Squiggles, CrypToadz, Goblintown, Checks, Max Pain by Xcopy, Good Vibes Club, and Milady—will go live shortly.
In the future, TokenWorks also plans to allow any NFT collection owner to deploy their own NFTStrategy token for their series.
Discussions around NFTStrategy remain heated. Yesterday, a tweet proposing that OpenSea spend $2 million to buy NFTStrategy-related tokens sparked considerable debate.
In summary, we can identify key factors behind $PNKSTR’s success:
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A development team with established credibility
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Widespread recognition and acceptance within the NFT community
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Compared to fast-paced meme traders, NFT enthusiasts are more receptive to NFT-related memes and on-chain experimental mechanics
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Although the NFT market has been depressed long-term, top-tier NFT collections have stabilized within a relatively consistent price range—not as glorious as before, but with sufficient stability and audience retention
However, this remains ultimately a form of self-reinforcing momentum. How long it can last remains to be seen.
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