Punk Attributes

Each punk is just 24×24 pixels – tiny if looked at on it's actual scale; iconic and incredibly well balanced when scaled up.

Jacks' CryptoPunk sized 1:1 at 24×24 pixels...

The same punk scaled up...

No two punks are alike; they were assembled from various traits like hairstyle, headware or jewelry by an algorithm.

There are four fundamental types of punks:

• Aliens
• Apes
• Zombies
• Humans

Then, there are 87 different attributes that are layered on top of the base heads:

• Headware
  • Bandana, Beanie, Blonde Short, Cap, Cap Forward, Choker, Cowboy Hat, Do-rag, Fedora, Headband, Hoodie, Knitted Cap, Orange Side, Pigtails, Pilot Helmet, Pink With Hat, Police Cap, Tassle Hat, Tiara, Top Hat, Welding Goggles
• Hairstyle
  • Crazy Hair, Mohawk Dark, Mohawk, Mohawk Thin, Frumpy Hair, Wild Hair, Messy Hair, Stringy Hair, Wild White Hair, Wild Blonde, Straight Hair Blonde, Big Beard, Red Mohawk, Half Shaved, Blonde Bob, Vampire Hair, Clown Hair Green, Straight Hair Dark, Straight Hair, Dark Hair, Purple Hair, Shaved Head
• Jewelry & Accessories
  • Gold Chain, Silver Chain, Medical Mask, Clown Nose, Vape, 3D Glasses, Eye Mask, Pipe, VR, Small Shades, Eye Patch, Classic Shades, Regular Shades, Horned Rim Glasses, Big Shades, Nerd Glasses, Cigarette, Earring
• Expressions & Makeup
  • Buck Teeth, Spots, Rosy Cheeks, Smile, Frown, Purple Eye Shadow, Blue Eye Shadow, Green Eye Shadow, Clown Eyes Green, Clown Eyes Blue, Black Lipstick, Mole, Purple Lipstick, Hot Lipstick
• Beards
  • Front Beard Dark, Handlebars, Front Beard, Chinstrap, Luxurious Beard, Mustache, Normal Beard Black, Normal Beard, Goat, Muttonchops, Peak Spike, Shadow Beard

You can browse them all on the official CryptoPunks website.

Eight punks have none of those attributes layered on top of the base headshape, they're called the "zero atties", and only one single punk has seven different attributes:

Punk #281 has 0 attributes (1/8) and Punk #8348 has 7 attributes (1/1).

There have been many efforts by the community to categorize punks and find new and meaningful ways to browse them. For example, recently all punks have been categorized by their colors, which is a fascinating exercise and surfaces new collectible dynamics. Only 24 punks have just two colors.

The 24 punks with only two colors.

It is absolutely not trivial to design a rarity system that is interesting and has good collectible dynamics. For punks, this worked out beautifully, with very conscious decisionmaking around how traits and rarity are distributed.

In the beginning it as just a 24×24 pixel Photoshop file with a whole bunch of layers... Once that was working we switched to a code based generator. At first it just randomly selected some stuff to put on the head and then as we went further it got more complicated. Eventually we had an Excel spreadsheet where you could put rules in to define which traits don't work together, and the expected rarities for each type and trait. For example, Aliens were supposed to be on average 10 out of 10,000 and there ended up being nine. John Watkinson from LarvaLabs during the Charleston CryptoPunk Meetup 2023.

Another beautiful dynamic is how the community gathers around specific traits they identify with. For example, hoodie punks by far not the rarest (259 exist), but are some of the most sought after just for how they look. "In it for the art...".

No question, punks are the absolute gold standard of a digital collectible.