I didn't expect PunkStrategy to go mainstream.

In the Ethereum mainnet, a token named $PNKSTR has surged by around 160% in the past 2 days, with its market cap briefly surpassing $50 million, becoming a dazzling sight in the extremely dry on-chain market. Currently, the token has retraced slightly, with a market cap of around $43 million.

The full name of $PNKSTR is "PunkStrategy," which achieves an NFT and token cyclical flywheel through trading CryptoPunks NFTs. Each $PNKSTR transaction incurs a 10% fee, with 8% being deposited into the protocol. Once the protocol's pool accumulates enough funds to cover the cost of purchasing CryptoPunks, the contract automatically buys a floor-priced CryptoPunk and sets an automatic sell order at 1.2 times the purchase price. Upon successful sale, the ETH received is used to buy and burn $PNKSTR tokens.

Currently, the fee revenue of $PNKSTR has approached 700 ETH, completing full buy-and-sell transactions for 12 CryptoPunks, resulting in approximately 2.8% of the total supply of tokens being burned.

Essentially, this is one of the hottest topics in the NFT community recently, with active discussions among NFT KOLs and various Twitter users displaying CryptoPunks. Interestingly, @waleswoosh, a prominent NFT KOL, once tweeted on September 15 when $PNKSTR's market cap fell below $10 million, predicting the imminent demise of $PNKSTR. However, a week later, $PNKSTR skyrocketed.

The developer who deployed $PNKSTR is not an unknown figure, but TokenWorks, a group composed of developers who have been actively involved in various on-chain projects. TokenWorks' official account follows 5 individuals, each of whom is a seasoned player in the blockchain space, such as @surfcoderepeat, who has previously worked on Lotus on Arbitrum and FrenPet on Base.

Before $PNKSTR, TokenWorks' most famous and successful project was the "Black Hole Coin" $O on the Shape network, and even beeple once tweeted to promote $O.

Prior to the launch of $PNKSTR, TokenWorks had already introduced 10 on-chain projects, each adopting a unique on-chain gameplay.

Building on the success of $PNKSTR, on September 20, TokenWorks further launched NFTStrategy, introducing tokens for 5 NFT projects - BAYC, Pudgy Penguins, Moonbirds, Meebits, and CryptoDickbutts. The mechanism is similar to $PNKSTR, with the only difference being that out of the 10% transaction fee charged, 1% is paid as a royalty to the owners of the NFT series, and 1% is used to buy and burn $PNKSTR.

These 5 new tokens are currently showing similar performances, with none exceeding a $3 million market cap. However, in the last 24 hours, the token associated with Meebits had the highest trading volume, approximately $1.6 million, and is currently in a slight lead in terms of market capitalization.

When NFTStrategy first launched, to prevent snipers, the purchase fee started at 95% and decreased by 1% per minute until stabilizing at 10%. Due to significant early buying, the protocol quickly accumulated fees exceeding the floor price of NFTs purchased, providing arbitrage opportunities. Within three hours, 0xa3d297423b17a3894dddd582dc41ff20e237ab75 netted 181.706 ETH, approximately $813,400, through trading 10 BAYC, 7 Moonbirds, 5 Pudgy Penguins, and 4 Meebits.

The reason was not a contract flaw but rather the project team failing to deploy the necessary operations. CryptoPunks have an on-chain marketplace, leading to a slight difference in the buying and selling process of new tokens compared to $PNKSTR in the NFT space. Without an on-chain marketplace, new tokens can only ensure that the NFT purchased can indeed be obtained through the contract, and anyone can call the contract to trigger a specific purchase.

It may be due to the team's workload, TokenWorks did not deploy a corresponding bot to ensure immediate buy-in when the funds reach the minimum purchase amount. However, this issue does not seem to have affected the performance of the new token. Yuga Labs' VP of Blockchain, @0xQuit, has also stated that he personally deployed a bot to address this issue.

Today, TokenWorks once again announced that starting this Friday, they will launch a new NFTStrategy token every day for a week. NFTStrategy tokens for Chromie Squiggles, CrypToadz, Goblintown, Checks, Max Pain by Xcopy, Good Vibes Club, and Milady, a total of 7 projects, will soon go live.

In the future, TokenWorks will also allow any NFT series owner to deploy NFTStrategy tokens for their own series.

The discussion about NFTStrategy is still lively. Yesterday, a tweet proposing that OpenSea spend $2 million to buy NFTStrategy-related tokens sparked a lot of discussion.

In conclusion, we can summarize the success of $PNKSTR:

- Having a reputable development team

- Gaining widespread recognition among NFT player communities

- NFT players are more enthusiastic about accepting NFT-related memes and on-chain gameplay experiments than fast-paced meme players

- Although the NFT market has been in a long-term slump, the prices of top NFT series have stabilized in a relatively narrow range. While the glory days may be over, they have solidified enough stability and audience

However, this is ultimately still a form of "left foot stepping on the right foot" stimulus, and how long it can be sustained needs to be verified over time.