Four years later, the re-emergence of "Punk Sweep" saw a single address spend $8 million to sweep up 46 Crypto Punks, completely igniting the NFT community's enthusiasm.
Not just Crypto Punks, the overall trading volume of the NFT market has warmed up again in recent days, even surpassing the high point of February this year. According to data from the Coingecko platform, the total market capitalization of the NFT sector has increased by 29% within 24 hours, breaking through $6.7 billion. The trading volume has skyrocketed by 372%, reaching $45 million.
Crypto seems to have abandoned the NFT sector for a long time, but the "notorious" MoonBirds have recently taken action, seemingly preparing to follow the IP path of "Pudgy Penguins." With the overall NFT market warming up and Opensea being mentioned multiple times after a long wait post-official announcement, can we ask the question, "Is NFT Summer back?"
Four years later, a whale sweeps up CryptoPunks
Four years ago, in July 2021, "0x65d" spent approximately $7 million to sweep up 104 CryptoPunks, which is the legendary "Punk Sweep." In March 2022, these 104 CryptoPunks were collectively valued between $20 million to $30 million for auction at Sotheby's, but twenty minutes into the auction, "0x65d" canceled it.
Related reading: (Why was Sotheby's large auction of 104 CryptoPunks canceled?)
In July 2025, four years later, "0x1bb" spent approximately $8 million to sweep up 46 Crypto Punks. Seeing "Punk Sweep 2.0" as ETH gradually approaches its historical peak feels like a sense of cyclical fate.
The funds for purchasing NFTs at address "0x1bb351C5410b2f6BaE36a74aA6B38a9800AE72D6" were transferred from Coinbase Prime a day ago. In addition to 46 CryptoPunks, the address also purchased 11 generative art leaders, Chromie Squiggle. According to on-chain data, part of the funds used for purchasing NFTs was also transferred from address "0xF1CDC3De7819f93fB93D0c52001d4Fa495Ab471D," which had its funds transferred from Coinbase Prime a day ago and also purchased 19 Chromie Squiggle.
In other words, "0x1bb" has purchased a total of 46 CryptoPunks and 30 Chromie Squiggles, spending approximately $8.6 million.
Currently, the identity of "0x1bb" remains a mystery, with no one knowing which whale or institution is behind this address. After the copyright of CryptoPunks was acquired by Infinite Node Foundation for about $20 million in May this year, the official Twitter of Infinite Node Foundation has not updated any tweets, making this a "mysterious rise" — we do not know who "0x1bb" is or why he suddenly made such a large purchase.
However, the large-scale purchase by "0x1bb" has clearly ignited the sentiment in the NFT market:
The overall rising Ethereum NFTs (well... except for Milady)
The overall rising Solana NFTs
The overall rising Bitcoin NFTs
Is Moonbirds going to follow the old path of penguins?
The rise of Moonbirds is particularly eye-catching among all these projects. In the past week, the floor price of Moonbirds has increased nearly threefold. If we extend the timeline to the past three months, the floor price of Moonbirds has increased nearly elevenfold.
On May 31 of this year, Moonbirds was acquired by Orange Cap Games from Yuga Labs, and the news caused the floor price to soar nearly threefold. After a period of adjustment, Moonbirds experienced an explosion.
Moonbirds is currently conveying an image of "Pudgy Penguins CTO 2.0." In 2022, after Luca Netz took over Pudgy Penguins, the team quickly went to work, refreshing the entire IP, which has now become a top IP in the NFT circle.
Orange Cap Games, which acquired Moonbirds, is also known for creating the card game "Vibes TCG" using the Pudgy Penguins IP. By the end of 2024, Orange Cap Games completed a $2 million angel round of funding, and it was with the help of this round of funding that "Vibes TCG" came to be. On June 10 of this year, they announced the completion of a $3.5 million seed round funding, led by 1kx and Yuga Labs.
In 2023, Pudgy Penguins raised $9 million in seed funding, which was led by 1kx.
Spencer Gordon-Sand, the CEO of Orange Cap Games, is a well-known figure in the circle; he founded Spencer Ventures, a fund focused on NFTs, in 2022. After Orange Cap Games acquired Moonbirds, the new team quickly delivered some visible changes to the community, much like what Pudgy Penguins did in its time.
"Spencer: In the 51 days following the acquisition of the entire Moonbirds series, we became the top daily trading volume for ETH NFTs for 5 days, confirmed the airdrop from the social app Towns, validated free Pokémon cards, had OpenSea's official Twitter change to our avatar, established a Telegram announcement channel with 25,000 members, allocated $1.4 million for a lottery purchasing our Telegram stickers, secured $350,000 in funding led by 1kx, hired new team members, and are about to announce."
It can be said that Moonbirds has been liberated from the strategic contraction of Yuga Labs and has become an IP that a new company is vigorously developing, making people associate it with the look of Pudgy Penguins from years ago as its price rises. These changes have significantly altered the fundamentals of Moonbirds.
What other projects have experienced significant movements today?
Although thanks to ETH's recent rise, the main force driving funds into NFTs today is still Ethereum, many projects in both the Solana and Bitcoin ecosystems have also jumped on this wave.
Solana ecosystem
The Solana official account today directly released the images of four NFT projects with the caption "We're so back." In fact, these four Solana NFT projects have all developed in different directions within their respective fields.
Among them, the top left Solana Monkey Business (SMB), as one of the earliest NFT projects deeply cultivated in the Solana ecosystem, still ranks first in growth rate, with a 24-hour increase of 36%, reaching a floor price of 25 SOL, and the transaction volume has exceeded $650,000.
This NFT project, operated by MonkeDAO, is known for its community orientation and innovative initiatives like running Solana validation nodes. Its core founding team members, Nom and SolportTom, are also members of the founding team of the successful launch platform LetsBonk/BONK, which has effectively countered Pumpfun.
In addition, SolportTom also mentioned another project by his "DeRUG" (AKA CTO) — Taiyo Robotics, which has also seen a strong rise, with a 40% increase in floor price within 24 hours, reaching 60 SOL. The trading volume has also exceeded $260,000, and in the past month, it has increased tenfold. According to Tom, this is the first CTO project to emerge in the Solana ecosystem, which is currently popular with the "CTO concept."
Tom also shared his experience of being "forced to be CTO" at the time. When he first entered the circle, he was still a developer with no reputation working for clients. At that time, we had a small BD team that would run to their Discord to message them whenever a new project was MINTed, saying we could provide some services, such as deploying Candy Machine.
Later, Taiyo approached the team saying they wanted to create a marketplace where users could purchase custom assets and replace parts on their bots. They brought TOM's team into Discord and assigned roles to them, but afterward, they basically "vanished."
The people in the results community believe they are also members of the team, but TOM himself is also unclear. "Not wanting his reputation to be tarnished, he decided to take over the project himself, using it as a backing for community credibility to gain some goodwill."
Different from SMB's deep cultivation of the Solana community, Claynosaurz's path is more like the "American-style" Azuki. The project is led by a team of experienced animators, focusing on high-quality content creation, with nearly $120,000 in trading volume in the last 24 hours. Claynosaurz recently won a Collision Awards Gold Prize for its excellence in animation. Meanwhile, team members were also invited guests at one of the most renowned animation exhibitions, COMIC CON, held in San Diego, making it one of the most prominent animated NFTs in the Solana project.
Meanwhile, the floor price of the former Solana leader Mad Lads surged by 20% within 24 hours, bringing the floor price back to 40 SOL. The well-established NFT project Galactic Geckos also saw remarkable growth, with its floor price nearly doubling in 24 hours, currently quoted at 6.5 SOL.
Ordinals ecosystem
The Ordinals ecosystem has been quiet for a long time but has stirred some waves. Aside from NodeMonkes, which saw a 30% increase in daily floor price (though still far from ATH), the current leader in the Ordinals ecosystem, Taproot Wizard, is just 6 orders away from reaching ATH again. Considering the increasingly expensive Bitcoin, the floor price has already soared to $25,000. Moreover, purchasing an NFT still costs "digital gold" Bitcoin, making it hard not to think that Taproot Wizard's next plans may far exceed just being a "community."
As more and more NFT projects and old OGs are revived, does this NFT boom represent a recognition from the capital market, becoming a channel for funds to overflow into the bull market, or is it ultimately just another fleeting instance after countless attempts at revival?
We cannot know, just like we do not know how long "is coming" is for OpenSea.
