From the outside, it may seem that the rise of NFTStrategy was accidental and unpredictable. But let's try to dig deeper and understand who is behind the project and what problems they are trying to solve.

TokenWorks is an experimental Web3 lab that launches on-chain mechanics around tokens and NFTs: from ERC-20 gaming experiments to Uniswap v4 hooks and perpetual machines trading NFTs.

The founder and public face is Adam Lizek, also known as Rhynotic in the crypto art community. Prior to TokenWorks, he created the Vulcan wallet verification tool, which was acquired by PREMINT in 2022.

Over a period of 10 months (from October 2024 to July 2025), 10 projects were created under the leadership of TokenWorks:

1. Circle is an ERC20 token on Shape (Ethereum L2) where every buy makes the circle bigger, and every sell makes it smaller. Beeple even made an everyday about it.

2. PVP (Player vs Player) is a custom ERC20 token concept on Base where users can "raid" any wallet to steal their $PVP balance.

3. Golden Handcuffs is an ERC20 token on Base, where specific wallets are "handcuffed" with restrictions. When these wallets make their first outgoing transfer, they "break" their golden handcuffs and spawn a new coin contract (BrokenHandcuff) with liquidity automatically added to Uniswap V3. 18 pre-defined wallets (Influencers, KOLs, Thought-leaders) are each sent 5% of the supply. These users can break their Golden Handcuff and cash in at any time, but the transaction will unleash a fury of degens who will now bet on their newly deployed memecoin.

4. Top Blaster is a novel ERC20 token concept on Base where users are taxed 6.9% on sells. ALL of the taxes enter a prize pool
   Whoever “Top Blasts” (pays the most for their tokens) gets all of the fees for that period.

5. btc/acc is a protocol that helps you automatically accumulate Bitcoin while trading. Instead of losing all your profits in memecoins, btc/acc ensures you're building a position in Bitcoin over time.

6. SPAWN is an ERC20 token concept, launched in protest of "tokenizing everything." The main SPAWN token, cheekily named "Sustainable Pyramid of Assets Where No One Loses Money, was deployed with a custom Uniswap v4 hook. Every time someone swapped through the v4 hook, it would launch another SPAWN token with a random name and ticker. These child tokens would have liquidity pools with the v4 hook as well, inheriting the same spawning logic. Each generation had a larger creator tax (the original token took 1% of each trade, its children took 2%, their children 3% etc.).

7. Content in a form of protest to shilling endless "ContentCoins". When users owned at least 1 token, the art would show as an ERC1155 NFT in their wallet automatically, allowing it to be viewed on all marketplaces (where minted Content usually lives). The image was stored on-chain as an SVG and would alternate between 3 states. If the last trade was a buy, it would show a Happy face. If the last trade was a sell, a sad face. If there was no trade in the last 5 minutes, it would return to Content. We created a custom v4 hook that would take a variable creator fee based on trader profit. If the trader >=2x'd, we would receive 10% of their trade when swapping from ETH -> ContentmentCoin. If they broke even or lost money, the creator fee would be 0.

8. FundingWorks is a non-speculative funding model. Creators can create campaigns. Supporters commit ETH to creators, not products. Creators can use the funds as they choose. ETH is held inside a soulbound NFT and vested to the creator over time. Supporters can burn their NFT to withdraw unspent funds, pro-rata.

9. CTO (Community Takeover), where anyone can takeover the token, change the name/image/ticker, and earn creator fees. Token with a 4% buy/sell tax. Fees are split between the CEO (the builder) and the current CTO (Chief Technology Officer).
   Holders can try to CTO the token and update the name/image/ticker by rolling a dice onchain using Proof of Play's vRNG.
   1% of their tokens are burned when they call the function. If successful, the token metadata updates to their submission and they start earning ETH automatically from trades.
   They remain CTO until someone else takes over.

Rhynotic said after CTO: I've also come to terms with not being able to push tokens after release. 

It is important to note that almost every release introduces new mechanics around the token/NFT. All releases are documented in the archive on the website (with dates, honest feedback, “what worked/didn't work”), which is a huge plus for the developers.

On September 6, 2025, a post will be published describing the new PunkStrategy ($PNKSTR) project as a perpetual machine from TokenWorks. 

The Yoyo is a simple mechanism for buying and selling Punks while burning token supply, forever.

The launch was not smooth: the website crashed, Twitter was blocked, and the mechanics had to be changed during the process, but the project survived nonetheless.

According Dune

• 1766 Total ETH Trade Fees

• 10599 PNKSTR holders

On September 15, 2025, TokenWorks announced NFTStrategy, a system similar to PunkStrategy, but for various NFT projects that will stimulate the PNKSTR token.

The launch took place on September 19, 2025, where they added such strategy collections as:

• $APESTR = Bored Ape Yacht Club
• $PUDGYSTR = PudgyPenguins
• $BIRBSTR = Moonbirds
• $MEEBSTR = Meebits
• $DICKSTR = CryptoDickbutts

The mechanics of the new project are designed to stimulate a floor price of NFTs, the creator of the collection, and the PNKSTR token.

You can follow the ecosystem on Coingecko

or Dune

• $36,431,308 Total STR Fees (Inc'd PNKSTR)

Pros:

1. Simple value loop

2. Scalability to any collection + alignment of interests between IP creators and token holders

3. Support from individual rights holders. According to ApeStrategy, Yuga (Garga) waived 1% royalties in favor of additional BAYC purchases, which reinforces the “floor buying” effect

Risks:

1. Dependence on trading volumes

2. Arbitrage and operational delays at the start of strategies

3. A drop  collections' liquidity reduces the effectiveness of the mechanics

4. Burning 20% of your volume reduces trading activity.

At first glance, nothing unusual. An old Base collection pump. There are many collections on Ethereum in the top 10, allowing it to maintain its lead,..

but volumes are lower than last month.

Let's take a closer look at the impact of the protocol on Cryptopunk sales volumes. I would like to remind you that the protocol was launched in September 2025. Historically, this looks like normal volume fluctuations.

But Punks is an expensive collection, and you need to save up fees for a long time to buy NFTs. In the collection volume rank above, we can see that the largest growth occurred in Good Vibes Club.

Here we see growth comparable to the interest at launch, which nevertheless didn't allow the project to rise above 10th place.

Thus, at this point, the NFTStrategy may increase speculators' activity and attention to individual collections, but there is no reason to say that the protocol significantly affects the NFT market.

This is definitely the most successful of Tokenworks' projects. The first wave of hype has passed, and the project hasn't reached the big leagues or disrupted the NFT market yet, but their efforts haven't gone unnoticed by the crypto community.

Anyway, we wish the developers all the best and will keep following their progress.