The Infinite Node Foundation (NODE) is pleased to announce the acquisition of the intellectual property of @cryptopunks from @yugalabs.
Launched by Larva Labs in 2017, CryptoPunks are widely regarded as the catalyst for the modern digital art movement. Their $3.07B in sales have established Matt Hall and John Watkinson as the highest-selling living artists of our time.
The pioneering collection of 10,000 unique, algorithmically generated pixel art characters now lives within the most well-capitalized nonprofit dedicated solely to digital art in the United States.
Formed in 2025 by Micky Malka and Becky Kleiner, NODE’s purchase of the the IP and additional $25M endowment outpaces the digital art funding of all major U.S. institutions. NODE exists to build networked architecture for digital works like CryptoPunks to be studied, exhibited, and contextualized within the art-historical canon.
This transition isn’t about ownership, but liberation. Freed from corporate friction and limitations, the Punk ethos can now thrive through a decentralized, community-driven future.
To guide this journey, NODE has assembled a Punks advisory board led by Matt Hall and John Watkinson (Larva Labs) along with visionary voices in the project’s history, Wylie Aronow (Yuga Labs), and Erick Calderon (Art Blocks). In addition, we are happy to share that we will be enlisting Natalie Stone as a consultant to support the NODE team during this transition.
This vision begins with a major exhibition of the full 10K collection, to debut alongside the opening of NODE’s permanent hub and exhibition space in Palo Alto. Here, NODE will host a full Ethereum node to contribute towards the permanence of the works housed within.
Under our stewardship, CryptoPunks will remain as the artists intended, while continuing to stand as the defining collection of this century’s defining art movement.
Thank you to all who have been a part of the Punks journey. Our new chapter together begins now.
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If $ape doesn’t become the token for web3, we’ve failed our mandate. We as a community need to rally. It’s not about 1 person or 1 company, it’s about all of us supporting this mission and making it a reality. IP Ecosystem Map of @yugalabs May 2023 (from @harry_forj).
If you are on this map, are you incorporating the use of $ape into your business? If not, why not? We as an @apecoin DAO need to be supporting you and solving for this. Just as our IP usage is exploding, so should $ape coin. It’s time to stop sitting back and waiting on Yuga (this is not a shot at yuga). It’s time for us to embrace $ape coin and create our own sinks as an ecosystem. THIS is what $ape is for and this is our mandate. Embrace it!!
I spent 10% of my life contributing to the development of the #VisionPro while I worked at Apple as a Neurotechnology Prototyping Researcher in the Technology Development Group. It’s the longest I’ve ever worked on a single effort. I’m proud and relieved that it’s finally announced. I’ve been working on AR and VR for ten years, and in many ways, this is a culmination of the whole industry into a single product. I’m thankful I helped make it real, and I’m open to consulting and taking calls if you’re looking to enter the space or refine your strategy.
The work I did supported the foundational development of Vision Pro, the mindfulness experiences, ▇▇▇▇▇▇ products, and also more ambitious moonshot research with neurotechnology. Like, predicting you’ll click on something before you do, basically mind reading. I was there for 3.5 years and left at the end of 2021, so I’m excited to experience how the last two years brought everything together. I’m really curious what made the cut and what will be released later on.
Specifically, I’m proud of contributing to the initial vision, strategy and direction of the ▇▇▇▇▇▇ program for Vision Pro. The work I did on a small team helped green light that product category, and I think it could have significant global impact one day.
The large majority of work I did at Apple is under NDA, and was spread across a wide range of topics and approaches. But a few things have become public through patents which I can cite and paraphrase below.
Generally as a whole, a lot of the work I did involved detecting the mental state of users based on data from their body and brain when they were in immersive experiences.
So, a user is in a mixed reality or virtual reality experience, and AI models are trying to predict if you are feeling curious, mind wandering, scared, paying attention, remembering a past experience, or some other cognitive state. And these may be inferred through measurements like eye tracking, electrical activity in the brain, heart beats and rhythms, muscle activity, blood density in the brain, blood pressure, skin conductance etc.
There were a lot of tricks involved to make specific predictions possible, which the handful of patents I’m named on go into detail about. One of the coolest results involved predicting a user was going to click on something before they actually did. That was a ton of work and something I’m proud of. Your pupil reacts before you click in part because you expect something will happen after you click. So you can create biofeedback with a user's brain by monitoring their eye behavior, and redesigning the UI in real time to create more of this anticipatory pupil response. It’s a crude brain computer interface via the eyes, but very cool. And I’d take that over invasive brain surgery any day.
Other tricks to infer cognitive state involved quickly flashing visuals or sounds to a user in ways they may not perceive, and then measuring their reaction to it.
Another patent goes into details about using machine learning and signals from the body and brain to predict how focused, or relaxed you are, or how well you are learning. And then updating virtual environments to enhance those states. So, imagine an adaptive immersive environment that helps you learn, or work, or relax by changing what you’re seeing and hearing in the background.
All of these details are publicly available in patents, and were carefully written to not leak anything. There was a ton of other stuff I was involved with, and hopefully more of it will see the light of day eventually.
A lot of people have waited a long time for this product. But it’s still one step forward on the road to VR. And it’s going to take until the end of this decade for the industry to fully catch up to the grand vision for this tech.
Again, I’m open to consulting work and taking calls if your business is looking to enter the space or refine your strategy. Mostly, I’m proud and relieved this has finally been announced. It’s been over five years since I started working on this, and I spent a significant portion of my life on it, as did an army of other designers and engineers. I hope the whole is greater than the sum of the parts and Vision Pro blows your mind.
Apple's most hyped event #WWDC23 is happening tomorrow!
Apple will announce its first AR/VR headset at this event.
It's a big step towards the Metaverse.
Here are 7 metaverse coins to grab before they 100x: