Over 4 million dollars in ETH consumed in 16 hours, what is BitmapPunks?

Author: Golem, Odaily Planet Daily

There are no real rest days in the crypto world. This statement is reflected not only in the 24/7 trading market but also in the on-chain hot narratives that emerge regardless of the time period. On the first day of the new year, which should have been a day of rest, an Ethereum NFT project called BitmapPunks broke the silence on the chain.

This NFT project announced the opening of free minting at 22:00 on January 1, with a total supply of 2.1 million pieces. It announced the end of minting today at 14:00. According to etherscan data, a total of 1194.65 ETH was consumed to mint BitmapPunks, worth over 4.08 million USD, and Ethereum network gas prices soared above 50 gwei at one point. So why was BitmapPunks able to trigger on-chain FOMO? What innovative gameplay does it offer? Odaily Planet Daily will provide a brief introduction in this article.

Ultra-large Collection + "Bitmap Coin Combination" Deflationary Mechanism

BitmapPunks is primarily a free random minting ultra-large punk collection on the Ethereum chain, with a total supply of 2.1 million pieces and a minting limit of 100 per wallet. However, despite the large total supply, BitmapPunks also has rarity levels, with each punk composed of different rarity attribute combinations. You can check the rarity of features by entering the NFT number on the official website.

But BitmapPunks is not just an ultra-large NFT collection; it also proposes a deflationary mechanism called "Bitmap Coin Combination." The rule is that when players mint BitmapPunks, they will receive a 1:1 airdrop of the BMP token (token contract: 0xBBBB2D4d765c1e455E4896A64BA3883e914ABBBB). However, when the BMP tokens in a wallet are transferred or sold, the corresponding number of BitmapPunks in that wallet will be destroyed. Moreover, wallets receiving the tokens will not mint new NFTs; when players transfer or sell BitmapPunks in their wallets, the BMP tokens will also be automatically transferred to the receiving wallet.

Therefore, essentially, the total supply of BMP tokens will not change, remaining at 2.1 million, but BitmapPunks will continuously be destroyed during the BMP token trading process, leading to deflation. According to Blur data, over 140,000 BitmapPunks have already been destroyed. At the same time, BitmapPunks operates quite differently from the "Bitmap Swap" concept of ERC 404 that is being hyped at the beginning of 2024.

According to DEXscreener data, the current price of BMP is 3.48 USDT, with a market cap of 7.3 million USD. Additionally, according to OKX Wallet data, the trading volume of BitmapPunks has exceeded 22 ETH, with a floor price of 0.0008 ETH. Based on the author's personal testing, minting at 30 gwei, the cost of a single BitmapPunk is around 1.5 USDT, and so far, based solely on the coin price, the profit has at least doubled.

Will BitmapPunks Spark a New Year NFT Craze?

Although BitmapPunks has currently completed minting, the project is relatively new and lacks extensive public information for interpretation. The official Twitter has not updated detailed project introductions, with the latest tweet announcing the end of BitmapPunks minting.

However, based on community speculation, the founder of the BitmapPunks project is likely the founder of the NFT liquidity protocol Floor Protocol (X: @FLC_FlooringLab), who posted several tweets related to BitmapPunks before and after its minting. The only two followers of BitmapPunks, besides the official CryptoPunks account, seem to confirm this.

With the backing of the Floor Protocol founder, BitmapPunks gains an additional layer of mystery. At the same time, the prefix "Bitmap" in the name has sparked speculation among some players. Bitmap was originally a metaverse project developed on the Bitcoin ecosystem based on ordinal theory and bitmap theory, with the core idea of generating 2D plots based on Bitcoin block data. As an ultra-large collection, does the random generation rule of BitmapPunks resemble the Bitmap principle and match certain data on the Ethereum chain? If this hypothesis holds, then BitmapPunks may become an NFT collection generated in this way on Ethereum.

However, the above is all based on community speculation and hypotheses, and the subsequent performance of BitmapPunks remains to be observed. By the end of 2024, many blue-chip NFTs such as Pudgy Penguins, Azuki, and Doodles have announced plans to issue tokens, with some opinions suggesting this is the "last dance" for the NFT track, and the NFT space may become even more desolate in 2025. Unexpectedly, on the first day of the new year, amidst the overwhelming narrative of AI Agents, BitmapPunks has opened a door for the NFT track. How long this heat will last depends on the performance of the project team and the market.