💸 Yuga hand off

Hey frens. Welcome back to The Drop. It’s Wednesday, and the week is off to a great start. 

A big scoop dropped yesterday from Empire’s Katherine Ross and Lightspeed’s Jack Kubinec about Bitget’s Morph chain. Think power struggles, shadow execs, things like that. If you’re curious, I’d definitely give it a read.

Today we’re talking about some crypto culture touchpoints: CryptoPunks and blockchain-powered short films. 

NFTs aren’t dead yet, but things have certainly pulled back.

— Kate Irwin

P.S. Let me know how you’re liking The Drop! Send me an email at [email protected].

Yuga says goodbye to the Punks

Once a behemoth in the NFT world, Yuga Labs has been gradually selling off the IP it owns. It’s already said goodbye to the Meebits, Legends of the Mara, and HV-MTL.

The latest? Yuga has sold the CryptoPunks to a new foundation, dubbed the Infinite Node Foundation, roughly three years after acquiring the rights from Larva Labs in 2022.

Last month, Node was created and got $25 million to put toward its mission — and NFTNow reported yesterday that Node acquired the CryptoPunks for about $20 million. A Node spokesperson declined to comment on that figure.

“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,” states Node’s post about the news.

Node is new. It was “made possible through the generosity” of VC Meyer “Micky” Malka of Ribbit Capital and Becky Kleiner. Node’s advisory board includes Yuga Labs and Bored Ape Yacht Club co-founder Wylie Aronow, Art Blocks founder Erick Calderon, and Larva Labs co-founders Matt Hall and John Watkinson — all prominent names in the crypto art world. Phil Mohun — who previously worked on crypto AI art group Bright Moments — is Node’s executive director. We don’t yet know whether Node has any other members. 

The announcement revealed that Node will have a 12,000 square foot “permanent exhibition space” in Palo Alto, CA. The nonprofit plans to show off the entire CryptoPunks collection of 10,000 NFTs there.

Node won’t be the first NFT art gallery in the game, though. The Superchief Gallery has been around for years, with locations in Los Angeles and NYC.

Node’s purpose is to preserve and elevate digital art and onchain culture like the CryptoPunks. The Punks are its primary focus now, but long term it aims to create a space for digital art more broadly.

Punks are sometimes seen as the most “historic” NFT collection because they were launched on Ethereum back in 2017 (and now exist fully onchain). The Punks are believed to have inspired the ERC-721 standard, which is what most NFTs use today. 

But are CryptoPunks a part of many mainstream modern art conversations these days? I’m not so sure — though I think Node wants to change that.

“With BAYC's sudden success, we felt an owed responsibility to Matt, John and the wider crypto community to step up and become stewards, to help preserve what had started everything,” Aronow wrote in a post about buying and then selling the Punks. 

“I also believe this deal gives Yuga some additional space to refocus on what it set out to build in the first place,” he added.

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Pplpleasr’s Shibuya releases five short pilots

Crypto artist Emily Yang, known online as pplpleasr, hasn’t given up on her plans to make blockchain-powered filmmaking happen. 

Her streaming and crowdfunding startup Shibuya — which raised $6.9 million back in 2022 and counts a16z and Variant Fund among its investors — launched this week. 

Shibuya is hosting five pilots as part of its “Season One” and will ultimately let viewers decide if they want to further fund those projects with fiat currency donations that go entirely to the filmmakers (and supporters get refunds if the target amounts aren’t reached).

While Shibuya’s site doesn’t mention crypto, it’s in the process of adding blockchain rails and features, a spokesperson told me in an email. Coinbase’s Base chain sponsored the Season One launch event.

“We built Shibuya to disrupt the traditional studio system and put power back into the hands of creators and fans,” Yang said. “With the launch of Season One, we’re spotlighting bold, original work and inviting fans to decide what comes next.”

Back in 2022, Shibuya released an animated short, White Rabbit, as a proof-of-concept for the platform. It raised $1.2 million in less than 30 minutes. Yang also sold “Producer Pass” NFTs for Cannes that year, with NFTs costing anywhere from $14,000 to $19,600 worth of ETH each.

The question: Are successes like that still possible three years later, now that the NFT bubble of that era has popped and Hollywood struggles forward, with filming in Los Angeles at historic lows?

Some of Shibuya’s shorts up for funding are animated, while others are live action, with runtimes ranging from six to about 27 minutes per episode.

Ultrasound, from director Julian Lamadrid, is about a punk rock band in NYC. Every episode will be one shot (in Hollywood, that’s called a “oner”). Oners have been trending recently (like Adolescence on Netflix), and the choice makes sense here, too. 

Diaboli, a creepy medieval animated series about demons, religion and family, is about seven minutes long and has a video game-like feel with its dramatic, dark aesthetic and great voice acting. This one is like an episode from Netflix’s Love, Death and Robots, and is also a good watch for Castlevania fans.

Don’t Forget About Me from Elle Mills is a story about teenage siblings who meet their favorite childhood character from TV, while The Funny Thing About Losing Socks from Ben Christensen is about traveling to another dimension to retrieve socks lost in the dryer — but there’s a twist.

Last but not least, Spiritual 100 from director Jordan Cooper is a “satirical anime mini series” with humorous charm. In it, a broke guy joins a TV competition where a total of 100 people compete on a reality show that’ll determine who is the most spiritual.  

It’s a great mix of talent — we’ll have to circle back to see which ones get funded.