Monday, February 21st, 2022
Stephan Cilliers¹ writes:
I’ve been working on a synthetic loot spinoff for my latest project - synthetic punks.
1) Synthetic Punks stores a spritesheet [image with punk attributes] on chain and procedurally generates your [punk] avatar on the fly based on your [ethereum] address [for free].
2) You can optionally claim yours as an ERC-721 [non-fungible] token for 0.02 ETH (~ US$ 50) to support our future projects!
Check out your Synthetic Punk avatar at syntheticpunks.com
Comments from the Synthetic Punks r/ethdev discussion to find a valuation formula for unlimited punks:
Is there a limit in the number of synthetic punks generated? If so, what is it?
Sounds like it’s unlimited. One unique punk for every [ethereum] address.
Then by definition, these tokens will not make much money for the buyers. Only for the sellers. Not enough scarcity.
By definition an [non-fungible] token is a speculative asset and buying them in hopes they’re worth more later is certainly a losing strategy.
From the Syntethic Punk F.A.Q:
Q: Why can I claim [unlimited] random Punks?
A: When you click the random button, it generates a brand new ethereum wallet on the fly. Because you can prove you own the wallet associated with the punk, you can claim it and have it sent to your actual ethereum wallet.
More questions and answers from the Synthetic Punks r/ethereum discussion:
Q: If I don’t claim mine, can they take it away?
A: Nope, you can only claim a punk by sending the transaction from its associated [ethereum] address or signing a message proving you own the account (as is the case with claiming randomly generated punks).
Q: You got an opensea link? That’s my only hang up, I’m ready to get one otherwise.
A: Still in the process of adding the OpenSea Collection details but it’s there! [See] opensea.io/collection/synthetic-cryptopunks.
What’s your take?
Anyone has any insight what punk attributes are included in the spritesheet (see the SyntheticPunksAssets contract with the base64 image encoding²)?
Some first art critique:
The only piece of constructive [art critique] feedback I have is that the dark background is a bit too close to the black used on the outline of the punks.
Stephan Cilliers responds: Thank you! In hindsight the dark background wasn’t the best choice, admittedly.
Tip: You can preview any Synthetic Punk using syntheticpunks.com/#/address/0x08181F7C7FC7B06a5F88F4A400f00dC4B3F1cEA8 - that is, replace the address with another and reload the web page.
PS: Great to see the source published on github @ stephancill/synthetic-punks. I try to add the SyntheticPunks contract to the punks.contracts collection in the next days for further study.
More comments from the Synthetic Punks r/ethdev discussion. rrr_guy comments:
We built something really similar, but instead you mine the punks with a GPU, and the resulting hash (instead of address) generates an on-chain punk, with collision detection agains the original project and original probabilities of traits.
Probably could have saved you some [ethereum transaction] gas [fees] by using our spritesheet we already deployed for public usage [on September, 23rd 2021] ha!
See the MineablePunks contract.
Note ¹: Who is Stephan Cilliers?
Developer, studying electrical & computer engineering at University of Cape Town (UCT). Interested in technology, decentralisation of things, esports, and South Africa.
Location: Cape Town, South Africa
(Source: Stephan Cilliers’ Twitter Bio)
Note ²: Update I tried a quick & dirty conversion of the punk spritesheet, see Synthetic Punks (On Chain) Spritesheet (All 11 Archetypes and 133 Attributes) - Size : 10.77KB, 11028 Chars - Request For Comments.
Post them on the CryptoPunksDev reddit. Thanks.