# The evolution of NFTs (Part 1)

**Published by:** [Durwin](https://paragraph.com/@durwin/)
**Published on:** 2022-12-05
**URL:** https://paragraph.com/@durwin/the-evolution-of-nfts-part-1

## Content

NFTs exploded into the web3 scene like Snoop Dogg crashing a party, but will it still be there when the party is over?Now would be a great time to take stock and talk about NFTs… again. But this time, let’s zoom waaaaay out. Let’s go 30,000 feet in the air and see what NFTs have become over the last year or so. Let’s analyze the evolution of NFTs since its supposed inception years ago. Its not exact science trying to categorise something so nascent and fresh, so bear with me. It would take more than one article to delineantate the evolution of NFTs, but let’s try. It started with CryptoPunks in 2017, the O.G. of NFTs. The grand-daddy of em all.CryptoPunks is a non-fungible token (NFT) collection on the Ethereum blockchain. The project was launched in June 2017 by the Larva Labs studio, a two-person team consisting of Canadian software developers Matt Hall and John Watkinson.Simple, pixelated digital graphics of punk-looking faces, that you can’t really do much with. Believe it or not, the company behind CryptoPunks gave them out for FREE. Then came Meme culture. Memes were the fundamental language of the internet. It was quite elegant really, pictures that spoke a million words and captured societal happenings in the moment, spreaded and shared by netizens all over the world for laughs and giggles. There was Nyan cats, Charlie bit my finger, success kid, Overly attached girlfriend and Hold my beer.The original 2007 video “Charlie Bit My Finger,” a standard-bearer of viral internet fascination, has sold as a nonfungible token for $760,999, and the family who created it will take down the original from YouTube for good.Then more enterprising people decided to imitate CryptoPunks’ success. CryptoPunks were the pioneer of the 10K collection, which basically meant that each collection had 10,000 graphics. People started realising it was impossible to design and create each graphic individually. So the 10k algorithmically-generated NFT collection was born. And boy did they went to town with that. Anything you can imagine, apes, robotos, dogs, hotdogs, cities and more spun out seemingly overnight as the NFT hype starting building up. 10K NFT collections gave ownership to people, made the developers lots of money and with the new advancements in blockchains like Eth, that meant royalties could be taken for every sale, in perpetuity.Yuga Labs are creators of the popular Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection. This most recent funding round values the company at $4 billion.Giant companies were born, artists were magnified, developers for smart contracts were in hot demand and the money keep rolling into the NFT space. Then, there was the fascination with pfp, or profile pictures. There were even NFT collections that gave you an AR filter that you could use in Zoom calls. All these while scams, phishing and rugpulls permeated the scene, getting bolder and fiercer with each try. We spoke about how it started with the OG CryptoPunks, then Meme culture, then the 10k collections, then scams and grifts. Stay tuned for part 2. - Are NFTs an integral part of Web3? - #startups #business #startupx #growth #success #socialmedia #culture #entrepreneurship #strategy #eth #bitcoin #cryptocurrency #bayc #nft #airdrop #branding #evolution #revolution #web3

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