On the Ethereum mainnet, a coin called $PNKSTR has seen a roughly 160% increase in value over the past two days, briefly exceeding $50 million in market capitalization, creating a bright spot in an otherwise dry on-chain market. Currently, the token has retreated slightly, with a market capitalization of approximately $43 million.

$PNKSTR, short for "PunkStrategy," completes the NFT and token cycle by trading CryptoPunks NFTs. Each $PNKSTR transaction incurs a 10% fee, with 8% deposited into the protocol. Once the protocol's funding pool accumulates enough funds to purchase CryptoPunks, the contract automatically purchases one CryptoPunk at the floor price and automatically lists it for sale at 1.2 times the purchase price. After the sale is successful, the proceeds of the ETH used to purchase and burn $PNKSTR.

Currently, $PNKSTR’s fee income is close to 700 ETH, and it has completed the complete buy and sell transaction process for 12 CryptoPunks, with a total of approximately 2.8% of the total supply of tokens being destroyed.

This has been the hottest topic in the NFT world lately, with active NFT influencers and various Twitter users using the CryptoPunks handle heavily discussing it. Interestingly, @waleswoosh, a prominent NFT influencer, tweeted on September 15th, when $PNKSTR's market cap fell below $10 million, that $PNKSTR would soon disappear. However, a week later, $PNKSTR's price skyrocketed.

The developers who deployed $PNKSTR weren't unknown individuals. They were members of TokenWorks, a group of long-time developers actively involved in various on-chain projects. The TokenWorks official Twitter account follows five individuals, all of whom are familiar veterans of the blockchain industry, such as @surfcoderepeat, who 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. Beeple even tweeted to promote $O.

Before the launch of $PNKSTR, TokenWorks had launched 10 on-chain projects, each of which adopted a unique on-chain gameplay.

Following the success of $PNKSTR, TokenWorks further launched NFTStrategy on September 20th, releasing tokens for five NFT projects: BAYC, Pudgy Penguins, Moonbirds, Meebits, and CryptoDickbutts. The mechanism is identical to $PNKSTR, except that 1% of the 10% transaction fee is paid as royalties to the NFT series owner, and 1% is used to purchase and burn $PNKSTR.

These five new tokens are currently performing similarly, with none exceeding a market capitalization of $3 million. However, over the past 24 hours, the token corresponding to Meebits has the highest trading volume, approximately $1.6 million, and currently holds a slight lead in market capitalization.

When NFTStrategy first launched, to prevent snipers, the purchase fee would start at 95%, decreasing by 1% every minute until it stabilized at 10%. Due to the initial surge in purchases, the protocol quickly accumulated fees exceeding the floor price of the corresponding NFT series, creating an opportunity for arbitrageurs. 0 xa 3 d 297423 b 17 a 3894 dddd 582 dc 41 ff 20 e 237 ab 75 In three hours, by buying and selling 10 BAYCs, 7 Moonbirds, 5 Pudgy Penguins, and 4 Meebits, a net profit of 181.706 ETH, approximately $813,400 USD, was earned.

The reason isn't a contract vulnerability, but rather a lack of corresponding implementation by the project. CryptoPunks has an on-chain market, which results in a slightly different NFT buying and selling process between the new token and $PNKSTR. Without an on-chain market, the new token can only guarantee guaranteed access to purchased NFTs through the contract, while anyone can call the contract to trigger a specific purchase.

Possibly due to team overload, TokenWorks didn't deploy a bot to ensure immediate purchases once the minimum purchase amount was reached. However, this issue doesn't appear to have impacted the new token's performance, and Yuga Labs' VP of Blockchain, @0 xQuit, stated that he has personally deployed a bot to address the issue.

Today, TokenWorks announced again that it will launch a new NFTStrategy token every day starting this Friday for a week. NFTStrategy tokens of seven projects, including Chromie Squiggles, CrypToadz, Goblintown, Checks, Max Pain by Xcopy, Good Vibes Club and Milady, will be launched soon.

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

Discussions about NFTStrategy are still going strong. Yesterday, a tweet suggesting that OpenSea spend $2 million to buy NFTStrategy-related tokens sparked a lot of discussion.

In summary, we can make a summary of the success of $PNKSTR:

- A well-known development team

- Gaining widespread recognition among NFT players

- Compared to fast-paced meme players, NFT players are more willing to accept NFT-related memes and on-chain experimental gameplay

- Although NFT has been in a long-term downturn, the price of the top NFT series has stabilized in a relatively stable range. Although it is no longer glorious, it has accumulated enough stability and audience.

However, this is ultimately a kind of "left foot stepping on right foot" stimulation, and it will take time to test how long it can last.