TLDR;

• Art definition is subjective.

• ALL Punycodes have some level of creativity on top of the platform they’re created on. This creativity shows itself in the form of technical creativity, but many Punycodes demonstrate aesthetic and conceptual creativity beyond just technical.

• If you think novel acts of creativity from the past can be labeled as “art”: Yes, all Punycodes are art. If you disagree with this view and you focus on art intent, then to you, probably only about 40% of Punycodes are artistic.

• Most modern artists adopt an inclusive view of art, but this inclusive view also invites strong criticism and sometimes is labeled as “malicious” (even if not intended that way).

• Particularly in Punycodes’ context, being inclusive with the art definition for the collection curation has been the more objective position than being exclusive (more details in the article).

• Punycodes are some of the first creative experiments on the blockchain, regardless of the art label or not.

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On 10th May 2011, a Namecoin developer with the pseudonym khal opened Namecoin Core, loaded up his wallet, and registered d/xn--tzac and d/xn--9ca domain names on the Namecoin blockchain.

At first, these “xn--”s might look odd, but they are intentional. “xn--” prefix is used in the Punycode language. Punycode is an encoding language designed to transcode Unicode characters into a subset of ASCII consisting of letters, digits, or hyphens. So xn--tzac represents ϾϿ and xn--9ca represents é.

That’s great. But why register these characters on the blockchain in the first place?

We don’t know what was happening in khal’s mind exactly. As khal went off-grid in 2012, we don’t have a way of contacting him and asking questions. However, his going off-grid did not stop 3,253 more punycoded names from being registered until 2018.

These historical assets were later grouped as “Punycodes” collection by the people who rediscovered these assets in 2022. The assets saw strong interest from collectors and artists under the premise that they might be the first ownable artworks on any blockchain. Namecoin assets are not without their controversies, but they are still NFTs (or a better term could be blockchain collectibles due to the provenance debate).

The other question people often ask about Punycodes is, “Are Punycodes really art?”

Before going into the art debate itself, let me first briefly introduce different Punycodes types:

• ASCII-art: The way the Punycodes community named this category is funny because the characters used in this category are non-ASCII characters. Examples include the famous syringe┣▇▇▇═─, the owl (๏y๏), the table flip ╯❨°□°❩╯෴┻━┻ and 17 more pieces.

• Mixed-category: Like the ASCII-art category, this category includes new, previously unseen expressions. Examples include 💻→🔊 (emoji+symbol), ξther (symbol+word), and a few more.

• Multi-emoji: These 5 pieces include multiple emojis, telling a story. Most are done by the doxxed artist halluciphile, including the famous space whale 🌌🐋, and space whale’s story: 🌑🌎🔥💰💖🌌🐋🍀🚀💱👑

• Emojis: Popular Punycodes representing a single emoji: ⚡️, ☃, 🎃 and many more. Most of these are also done by the doxxed artist halluciphile.

• Symbols: Punycodes that don’t fall under any Unicode alphabet or emoji blocks (and don’t exist in any human keyboards), representing actual human symbols that existed before emojis were invented: ⁂, ★, ✿, ♭ and many more.

• Letters: Characters or letters that belong to an alphabet, but don’t mean anything by themselves: ツ, щ, బ, and many more.

• Words: Punycodes that, when decoded, produce a meaningful word in a non-ASCII character containing alphabet: kalør (color in Danish), россия (Russia in Russian), ٹوئٹر (Twitter in Arabic), and many more.

What is Art?

Art has been pushing the boundaries of human psych for millenniums. It has evolved and taken different forms. The subjective nature of art makes it difficult to define clearly; but generally, art is considered to be any range of human activity that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical effort, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas.

If everyone accepted the definition above, we wouldn’t need this article. Beauty and aesthetics are pretty commonly accepted everywhere, inside and outside the art world. The controversial parts of the art definition are usually conceptual ideas and works that include technical creativity.

While some find conceptual art very refreshing, others may consider it shocking, distasteful, and conspicuously lacking in craftsmanship. Some even simply deny that it is art at all. To understand more about conceptual art, I suggest reading the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on this topic. A good list of conceptual artworks can be found here.

Similarly, many do not accept that technical creativity constitutes “art” because technical successes tend to have practical usage in their intention, not an intention to directly deploy art for the masses to enjoy.

Art history, especially in the 20th and 21st centuries, has been full of debates about whether something can be considered “art”.

Recently, the launch of DALL-E 2 and Stable Diffusion sparked a conversation between people who think AI art is not art and those who think the ideation itself is the most meaningful part of an artwork.

Of course, even people who like conceptual art are sometimes not impressed. The conceptual art movement may also have eased opportunism, copying, and even art theft. Some criticize that now “everything is considered art”.

Modern art critics tend to be more inclusive with art definition. It is undeniable that the conceptual art movement brought significant creativity and ideation, and what’s called the shock factor here is simply provocation, part of the range of emotions an art piece should be evoking in people. Similarly, technical creativity is admired by many and can certainly evoke genuine admiration in people, therefore may also be considered artistic.

These debates are not new to the art world. So this is nothing new to Punycodes, but this new collection of old blockchain entries is now part of this conversation too.

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Punycodes may be “art” in two ways: Either:

1. They were created directly with artistic intentions where the creators themselves assigned an art label to their works.

2. They were created in a somewhat novel and creative way, but the creators themselves did not assign an art label to their works at the time of creation. But due to the existence of creativity that is admired by the people, the “art” title is being assigned by others retrospectively.

Let’s explore both of these possibilities.

We’ll look at the on-chain clues of artistic intent and off-chain artist confirmation of intent. Later, we’ll explore whether works can be considered art retroactively even if they weren’t labeled as such before.

On-Chain Clues Of Artistic Intent

Many pieces in Punycodes collection hold powerful clues suggesting that pieces had artistic intent. Some of them include direct aesthetic expressions (ASCII art or multi-emoji stories), some of them clearly visualize an artist’s vision, and some others just would not be fitting Namecoin’s original purpose so they are extremely likely to have been done with conceptual art intentions.

I will break down the artistic intentions behind Punycodes into four, from more commonly accepted to less accepted arguments:

1. Aesthetic expressions

2. Using a medium outside its original purpose for creative expression

3. Visualization of iconography (or beautifying something by visualizing it)

4. Technical creativity

Artistic Intentions #1: Aesthetic Expressions

Some Punycodes go beyond simple single-emoji or single-symbol visuals. They have a complete story or a completely new aesthetic expression. In other words, they likely qualify even for the strict, traditional definition of art. There are 20 ASCII-art, 5 multi-emoji, and 6 mixed-category assets within the collection. Here are some of these assets:

Argument: These assets are unique expressions and others are telling a story within the collection. They are absolutely artistic.

Counter-argument: Agreed, but this traditional art definition cannot be said for the entire Punycodes collection of 3,255 assets.

It is acceptable that some assets within the historical Punycodes collection would be more artistic than others, at least according to the majority of the observers. If everything in the world is put on an artistic spectrum, some Punycodes probably score much higher than others, while others might be scoring lower, but the argument made in the next paragraphs is that they are likely still above zero.

Artistic Intentions #2: Using the Medium as a Canvas

Namecoin is the first altcoin. Launched in early 2011, it was originally designed as a decentralized DNS. Its main purpose is to have censorship-resistant domains where accessible websites could be hosted. Its mechanism allows registering unique, non-fungible domain names on the blockchain. This is why Namecoin NFTs are referred to as the first NFTs.

However, after the launch, people quickly realized that this was the first time in history that people could store and own data in a decentralized way. Since Bitcoin did not have op_return functional until 2014, Namecoin would be the first place to mint, own, and transfer custom data. This opened up more possibilities than originally envisioned. In those early days, Namecoin Forum had arguments about the use of Namecoin.

Thanks to this feature, Namecoin is the birthplace of most blockchain experiments. First onchain image NFT, first onchain poem NFT, first onchain gospel NFT, first pfp NFTs, first decentralized web3 identity logins, first video NFT (with a link), and many more were done on Namecoin, years before the first Ether was mined.

The earliest, or at least one of the earliest of these experiments was Punycodes.

Argument: If someone used a medium outside its original purpose of usage, i.e. used it to express creativity or even only to do something novel in their mind, that qualifies as a powerful, medium-based conceptual art.

Recently, very similar to Punycodes (in fact inspired by it), a new wave of users started minting ENS domains outside ENS’s purpose, exactly to express themselves.

Counter-argument: There is no way to prove that “novelty” was the intention behind Punycodes. What if the creator indeed really wanted to use or sell them as classic domains?

Perhaps we can try to deduce the medium usage by digging deeper with our logic: There are two powerful arguments for the artistic intention here:
A. Inaccessibility on keyboards
B. Unresolved encoding

A. Inaccessibility on Keyboards

Let’s dissect a 2012 ASCII art Punycode into its characters.

These weird characters form a syringe, but they are not accessible on any of the human keyboards. Not on desktop keyboards, not on mobile keyboards, not on any Latin or non-Latin alphabet keyboards.

This is not only limited to the “ASCII-art” category within the Punycodes collection. All 200+ non-currency symbols in the collection are also inaccessible on all keyboards in the world. Additionally, emojis are accessible on mobile keyboards but not on any desktop keyboards (keep also in mind that smartphone usage has been increasing significantly since 2011). Words and letters however are accessible on the keyboards in different countries.

The argument: If a domain’s entire purpose is providing human access to a website, then why would you register a punycoded name that cannot be easily accessed by humans? If there is no utility, the intention here must be to do a “novel” act.

Counter-argument: Symbol domains or emojis can be copy-pasted to access, and they might look interesting on the browser domain bar, which might be why the minter minted them.

I don’t see merit in the counter-argument. Even in this copy-paste scenario, they are still not accessible easily. This is not what a user would want from a website domain. Additionally, “interesting” is exactly what the art intention is about (see more about this in the “Visualization” section below).

B. Unresolved Encoding

The latest historical Punycode was minted in 2017.

While the first IDN installation in the DNS root zone was done in 2010, Punycode encoding was not automatically activated in browsers until 2018.

The argument: If you are a domain squatter, you would register domains that are likely to function and that you can resell. Considering the ~9 months expiration feature of Namecoin, it does not make sense for a domain squatter to register a nonfunctional punycoded domain that would not have any secondary sale value. The logic would tell us that they would have registered these domains to express creativity, have fun, or simply for the novelty of it. All of these point to creative intentions.

Counter-argument: Perhaps the minters relied on future technological development or the fact that browsers would eventually activate automatic resolution of Punycode encoding language. After all, browsers had the function implemented, just not activated automatically. While 9 months expiration in Namecoin makes this counter-argument less plausible, it is still not a far-fetched idea: In fact, when I was interviewing halluciphile (the first discovered Punycodes artist), he mentioned that he did envision some art websites that would resolve on emojis (such as 🎸.bit) in the future (halluciphile still had artistic intentions, but he based it on a different vision - more on that later).

Whether punycoded domains not resolving was a factor in the creators’ intentions remains speculative. Still, the fact is, Punycodes are completely different from the standard .bit domains that would resolve easily.

My personal view here is; likely several or more word Punycodes were done with the hope that they would eventually resolve in browsers. But some word Punycodes were probably done just to do something novel and creative. On the other hand, all symbols and emojis have an extremely high likelihood of creative or artistic intentions because they would both not resolve on browsers until recently and they are completely inaccessible to humans from keyboards.

Artistic Intentions #3: Beautifying by Visualizing

Beyond using the medium outside its original purpose, artists also tend to bring visual appeal to an existing medium. A good architect designs a building that will still be used as a building, but the architect’s artistic job is to make the building visually more appealing or interesting. An artist can keep practical utility in mind while still performing an artistic act.

Creators of ASCII-art, emoji, symbol, multi-emoji, and mixed-category Punycodes directly expressed visual assets on the Namecoin blockchain. Even if they were to be used as domain names, the fact that they are visual would become more appealing to users.

However, the vision of the artist can go even further than just the visual appeal. The first doxxed artist of Punycodes halluciphile referred to these visual assets as “internationalized language of expression on the Internet”. Some quotes from my interview with halluciphile:

I like exploring different mediums as an artist: Circuit bending, glitch art, dancing with sticks, upcycling and collages…

My registrations are, undeniably, proper names of images for feelings and objects. This form of universal iconography supersedes any specific individual language in capturing the essence of ideas by utilizing standard accepted Latin text to represent graphical information. The string as an example is using emoji exclusively to tell a story that could be universally understood. It is a form of expression and is meant to be visual.

Although the original registrations did not have specific metadata to point to individual graphics, it was inferred that the operating system itself or the web browser would be responsible for rendering. It was my intention that the collection was to eventually feature its own intellectual property as a graphical representation of each Punycode. As the named entries themselves address information/images at their essence, without the need for externalities, it can be deduced that Punycodes are more visual at their core being than any contract or token name linked to metadata.

Eventually, I saw my registrations as not simply domains, but a possible network of accessible information based on instinctive iconography. If Namecoin was successful in capturing global demand and implementation, imagine using “😂.bit” to display artworks that convey that feeling. It’s like an expression of what that token means or does.

Argument: Visual expressions have aesthetic appeal, therefore are artistic.

Counter-argument: This is too vague. These visuals have existed before, it was not the artist’s original creation. If I just drew a circle on the floor, would that be art?

If the circle was drawn with genuinely artistic intentions, yes, it would be artistic. Expressing pre-existing visuals is widely accepted as art already. A heart’s shape ❤️, and a star’s shape ★ are well-known icons, yet are used by artists every day. By using Punycode encoding language, the creators simply drew these visual shapes using a different “pen”.

Artistic Intentions #4: Technical Creativity

Namecoin as a DNS was not designed to store non-ASCII characters. In fact, there were two failed attempts a few hours before the first Punycode was minted, using directly the Unicode on registration.

khal, the creator of the first 5 Punycodes, did it by using the Punycode encoding language.

Argument: People overcame the limitations of the chain by using an encoding language, while still not breaking the DNS system. Even if their intention was practical (squatting domains), the way the people managed to register these domains on a blockchain in this specific context qualifies as technical creativity, which can be considered “art”.

Counter-argument #1: If we count technical creativity as “art”, then any “first” could be art. Is the first DeFi smart contract art? Is the first Bitcoin that was mined art? Then there’s no limit!

I am one of those who see creative smart contracts as art too. Yes, people may be using art’s subjective nature to make financial gains, but personally, I try to keep an open mind when it comes to art. So yes, I think technical creativity qualifies as art.

Counter-argument #2: Let’s accept that technical creativity is artistic. Still, Punycode encoding language was previously created specifically for internationalized domains anyway. So it is reasonable for anyone working on domains to think of Punycode encoding language to store non-ASCII characters on the chain. Additionally, they had the Namecoin forum to help and guide them when they wanted to store non-ASCII characters on the chain.

This is correct, but it does not take away the creativity in using an encoding language to store previously non-storable assets on the chain. The fact that the creator even wanted to store normally non-storable assets is a creative thinking process.

Think about it this way: Arabic websites today are not using the Arabic alphabet as domains. They are primarily using the Latin pronunciation of the Arabic words. For example, the word “نمشي” in Arabic is pronounced as “namshi” and translates as “walk” in English. But the major footwear and fashion brand نمشي (Namshi) is using namshi.com, not نمشي.com or another local extension. Just like the city München in Germany using the website muenchen.de and not münchen.de or another extension.

Of course, one could argue that dotbit (.bit) does not have to work the same way as other top-level domains; but considering the lack of usage of Punycode encoding language (less than 1% of top-level domains today and even less in 2011), Punycodes creators still deserve applause for thinking about a usage that was not used at the time.

So for a Namecoin user to even want to use these non-ASCII, non-storable characters on Namecoin blockchain is certainly a creative thinking process. Having to use an encoding language to store them on the chain is another creative thinking process. Whether these multiple steps of creative thinking should be considered “art” is left to the reader. Personally, the more I think about this process in people’s minds at the time, the more I get fascinated; so yes, I think this is “art”.

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Out of these four categories of artistic intentions; technical creativity applies to all Punycodes. Visualization and conceptualization apply to 35-40% of the Punycodes. Aesthetic expressions, on the other hand, apply to less than 1% of the collection.

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Confirmation Of Artistic Intent

On 16th June 2022, the Punycodes community heard the news that the original creator of 966 Punycodes was discovered. The creator was an actual crypto-artist, who either directly made and was involved in producing many different crypto artworks including:

• 15 Rare Pepes

• 12 Mafia Wars

• 7 Bitcorns

• 19 Kaliedoscopes

halluciphile was experimenting with blockchain art on Namecoin even before his Counterparty works. On Sept. 22, 2014; halluciphile registered m/eow on Namecoin. There was not even support for the ‘m/’ namespace at the time. Within this name, he added a mixtape of sorts that required a now-defunct website, youtubedoubler.com.

Value field from the blockchain record on m/eow:

{ "to" : "NGM21hPe3iC9TrKWhar3NjDmes78hWVGJx", "from" : "Mvkcim1fzUVaGZ7viijpyruRxXh8xksWMg", "subject" : "http://halluciphile.com presents the first ever tweetable MicromixMixtapeAsciiculturejamDiybyncsaRemixrequest of A vs. B mashups thanks to youtubedoubler", "body" : "UWQTg9Vj: 1z0A 2K7e 2K8N 2K9x 2OH 2toC 4IxG 4Z1X 5xh 6aHJ 7GaS 7JnH 7KAk 7qQT 7tjH 8Ad1 96BL a3Ej a3TZ AjJ aUFc F51 ds(GB GW H6 Oq He Oh)", "email":"halluciphile@gmail.com"}

Quote from halluciphile about m/eow:

The subject of the token states the intention of being a first ever tweetable mixtape, in that the novelty of audio as represented by strings of text was thought to be significant. However, at the time I did not have words for tokenized music, nor think it was of significance in unto itself to a general audience, so such was not part of the declaration.

The entry is made up of a “body” with a series of codes, each representing a mashup track of two audio recordings together as depicted by the accompanying youtubedoubler link. It was also intended to be a christening of sorts as the first entry in what I figured at the time to be a new namespace outside of .bit purpose. m/ for mixtape, music, or mashup. Later, I initiated the namespace poem/ by encouraging other artists to publish using it.

Since most of the tracks have been backed up on the Wayback Machine, I have recently reassembled the information and incorporated them into a new player. My friend has created a webpage for listeners to be able to interact in a similar fashion to the original presentation but with added features like setting volume. m/eow is currently in the final stages of re-development, with a sequel in the works.

This Namecoin entry, m/eow, originally had an on-chain attestation confirming halluciphile’s intention of art. Around the time when halluciphile was using Namecoin outside its original purpose, he started registering Punycodes (some before, some after m/eow). halluciphile confirmed that his Punycodes were done with a creative process. He admits individual pieces were not done with a fully formed idea of a final artwork, but the whole process of registering these sets was an evolution of an artistic idea with no guide. The critical point here is that the declaration comes from the creator and the creator is an actual artist. An artist, doing his art.

halluciphile was welcome into the Punycodes community with open arms, NFT gifts, immediate DAO membership (entry cost 1E at the time), and a promise to roll more value for him.

I had a chat with halluciphile to confirm his artistic intentions behind his 966 Punycode creations. You can see some of these quotes above under the section “Artistic Intentions #3: Beautifying by Visualizing”.

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It’s worth reminding that halluciphile is the only discovered creator at the time of this writing. The intentions behind the remaining 2,289 Punycodes are not confirmed by their original creators. It is not easy to find and reach out to the original creators of all Punycodes. For these assets, we need to use logic to come to our conclusions, as done in previous sections.

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Up until now, we have shown:

1. The artistic intentions behind 1/3 of Punycodes are directly confirmed

2. 40-50% of Punycodes had artistic intentions directly at the time of the creation with a strong likelihood

3. All Punycodes had some creativity (at minimum technical creativity on top of the existing platform it’s built on) even if artistic intentions were not direct

The remaining question is; can the Punycodes that fall under #3 above be labeled as “art”, if they were assumed with “no art intention” at the time of creation?

Can Something Be Defined as “Art” Retroactively Even If They Weren’t Intended So Originally?

What if some Punycodes were not created with artistic intentions? What if they were definitely registered with the purpose of squatting non-Latin domains? Can they still be considered art?

We don’t know if all Punycodes’ creators called their creations “art” when minting them. On the other hand, one can challenge whether declarations even matter. The logical framework in previous paragraphs demonstrates some level of creativity for all Punycodes, varying from low to high, regardless of a quote from a creator. A lot of people who perform creative acts may not refer to their acts as “creative” or “artistic”. Even if a creator was “simply hoping to sell these domains to be later used as a website”, there was still a level of creativity involved in their creation of a Punycode name (see the Artistic Intentions #4: Technical Creativity section above).

In history, several examples of works are referred to as “art” although the creator had no artistic intentions when creating them. Cave drawings, rock engravings, and abstract signs are all referred to as parietal art in history. Their creators were most likely not trying to do an art project or declaring that they are doing art, but they were performing creativity to express a thought or a process.

Counter-argument: With this logic, anything old can be labeled as art because anything worth significance from history would have to have some level of technical, artistic, or even military creativity for their time. For blockchains, should we also refer to the first minted Bitcoins as “art” because they represent a technical achievement of decentralized money? Or should we refer to the first standard Namecoin domains as “art” as well?

This would be a fair question. The difference between Punycodes and these other examples is that Punycodes include technical creativity within the asset itself, on top of the existing technology of registering names in Namecoin. This cannot be said for early Bitcoins that were mined using the Bitcoin protocol, or standard Latin domains that were minted using the Namecoin protocol. Still, being a generally inclusive person, I can see the point of early Bitcoins or early Namecoin domain names being considered artistic too! They are incredibly significant snapshots of blockchain history and they deserve to be part of this debate.

Whatever we think about other assets, there is a strong argument for referring to Punycode encoding attempts as part of a creative thinking process, therefore artistic even if the intentions were not precisely artistic at the time. I have to note that I would use this argument only as a subjective argument in favor of these assets, because this is a vague line to walk on. There is strong subjectivity whichever way you lean on.

The questions you, as the reader, should answer are these: “Does creativity impress you? Can little, novel acts of creativity of the past be considered and sold as art, even if we don’t know how the creator labelled their work?”

So Are Punycodes Artworks?

There are five positions one can take at this point:

1. None of the Punycodes are art, because the creators did not announce that they were artworks at the time of their creation. It does not matter that the artistic intentions are logically sound or even confirmed later. It is not launched as an official art project, so it cannot be art.

2. The only Punycodes that can be considered art are those with absolutely confirmed artistic intentions. Even if there is a high likelihood for others to be artistic too, if they are not confirmed, they cannot be considered artistic.

3. The only Punycodes that can be considered art are those with confirmed artistic intentions or those where the traditional art definition is satisfied (aesthetic expression). Conceptual art does not fit my definition of art, and technical creativity does not mean they are artistic.

4. Punycodes with confirmed artistic intentions, Punycodes where traditional art definition is satisfied (aesthetic expression) and Punycodes where conceptual art definition is satisfied are art. The intentions behind these Punycodes are logically sound. But the technical usage of Punycode encoding language is not that creative and Punycodes that only satisfy this criterion (i.e. “word category” Punycodes) should not be considered art. The ambiguity behind these Punycodes means that they should be excluded from the collection.

5. All Punycodes can be considered art. Some are more artistic than others (aesthetic, conceptual, technical), but each Punycode contains a certain level of creativity. Those with no direct artistic intentions can retroactively be considered “art” because A) they carry the same technical signature as the rest of the Punycodes, and B) they have a basic level of creativity that separates Punycodes from other Namecoin registrations. Keeping “Punycodes with some creativity but unsure art status“ in the collection is more objective than subjectively labeling them as “not art” and removing them from the collection.

Adopting views #1, #2, or #3 would be disappointing because it would mean excluding approximately 30% of artworks in the 21st century. Personally, I am somewhere between the 4th and the 5th definition here. I accept the confirmed artworks as well as the ones where logical clues behind the aesthetic and conceptual pieces reasonably point to art. I am not 100% decided on “word Punycodes”. Clearly, the thinking process behind word Punycodes was more creative than classic ASCII domains. Whether or not this additional creative thinking process should be considered “artistic” is subjective. Beyond what I think, I have met multiple people in the Punycodes community, including many artists and two art curators who considered “word Punycodes” artistic. See this thread from an artist who bought a “word Punycode” because he is fascinated by its inclusion on the blockchain.

The chart below is a breakdown of Punycodes based on the arguments above.

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Can Punycodes Be Called “An Art Collection”?

So some people accept all Punycodes as art, and some people accept some of it. One question a collector might ask is; if only some of the pieces in the collection are artworks but others are not, can we really call this “an art collection” or “an art project”?

There is nothing wrong with curating or creating new collections out of old assets. After all, this is what arthouses do all the time. But it’s still worth making it clear here: Punycodes were never “launched” as an official project or an official collection originally. That title belongs to Monegraph on Namecoin (2014), the first true, official NFT project.

Punycodes were decentralized efforts of independent people who minted NFTs on the same chain, in the same blockchain era (pre-ERC721), using the same technical method (Punycode encoding language), with likely the same or similar intent. These common features are why the Punycodes community voted and retroactively grouped them as a collection.

The community overwhelmingly supported being inclusive and objective in the curation of the assets and decided not to exclude any historical Punycodes from the collection, whether they are “word” Punycodes or ASCII-art. If many people consider all Punycodes as “art”, this type of exclusion would surely introduce a significantly stronger subjective bias than including them during curation. The community chose to be objective.

Therefore Punycodes database was generated with a code, which scraped Namecoin explorers and created the categories based on Unicode block ranges - completely objectively. However, since there is ambiguity for some of the assets, Punycodes community thought it would be wiser and more humble to call Punycodes not “the first art NFTs” but rather “likely the first art NFTs”.

Ethical Aspect

The way most Namecoin historical NFT communities got formed was by NFT archeologists discovering expired names in the Namecoin blockchain and re-registering these assets with their own wallets. Some criticize this process. There are two often-voiced ethical concerns:

1. NFT archeologists re-register these assets in bulk for a minimal fee, become a whale and then dump the assets on other people. It’s an unequal and unfair process.

2. The process also results in the original creators receiving no value from the asset.

Distribution and equality: I know less about other collections to comment on, but with Punycodes, the community had been lucky. The two archeologists shared their discovery within the hour of the discovery on Twitter and each registered less than 2% of the Punycodes supply. They helped others to set up their Namecoin wallets and they even sent NMC to these wallets so that other people can register Punycodes too!

Creators receiving value for their creations: I have addressed this extensively in an earlier article, but it’s worth repeating it for Punycodes too.

The critics argue that artists not receiving any value from the expired and then re-registered assets is a terrible system.

I agree with this view.

The opposing side argues that the creators knew about Namecoin’s setup before minting the NFTs; and when they left them to expire, it’s akin to leaving a painting in the town square. This side also argues that NFT archeologists make the content and marketing around the rediscovered assets, so they deserve value too.

These are the two views on this topic. My position is that initial creators should receive value from their creations. In my opinion, this goes even further for Punycodes than other Namecoin collections, because Punycodes are artistic, and artists should get financial recognition for their work.

Probably an important point to remind here:

As of this writing, none of the original creators of Punycodes have objected to anything about the recently formed Punycodes community or re-discovered Punycodes assets.

The only rediscovered creator, halluciphile, was welcomed warmly to the community, gifted Punycodes and other NFTs, made a DAO member, and promised royalties when technical setups would be complete (dependent on the development work of a 3rd party service called Emblem Vault). halluciphile himself has expressed his full blessing to the Punycodes community and their assets.

Following this feel-good story, Punycodes DAO announced a manifesto:

If an original creator of a historical Punycode ever proves that they're the original creator via the wallet verification message process, Punycodes DAO commits to doing its best to ensure that the original creator receives value. An example of this could be to receive a substantial part of the royalties forever if & Vault launches individual contracts for historical collections. Another example could be gifting Punycode assets to the original creator from the DAO wallet, as per the DAO vote (depending on the creator's contribution to the collection).

In short, Punycodes DAO expressed its respect for artists and creators, and promised to do its best for a financial return for them.

I see this as a great compromise, but am also hoping that more can be done in the future. Punycodes DAO also launched a new collection called The Puny Factory where it’s supporting and highlighting artists within the community to publish new works. As of this writing, two artists have minted works in The Puny Factory and fully sold out.

Final Thoughts

Punycodes have been a breath of fresh air in the historical NFT space. Confirmed and logically derived artistic intentions, fair distribution, and the ethical approach to the original creators make the collection unique and approachable. The members of the community are welcoming, have immense respect for artists, and are in it for the art and for the history.

I am aware that not everyone accepts technical creativity as “art”. People are entilted to this opinion too. But bear in mind that gatekeeping art is more subjective than being inclusive with the art definition. Unfortunately, the NFT space is still new and people are still learning about art history. We have seen people seeking malicious intent behind others who enjoyed, paid for, and talked about these blockchain experiments. Art history does not treat gatekeeping kindly.

On rare occasions, some critics were financially motivated to spread misinformation about Punycodes too. The NFT timeline shift from 2015 to 2011 was understandably problematic for the historical NFT collectors and builders of these newer assets. But we have to keep debates respectful.

There will always be healthy debates about the definition of art. Having these debates is sometimes exactly the point of art itself. Still, there is a reason why Punycodes are grabbing the attention of artists, collectors, and auction houses. It’s because Punycodes might really be the first art NFTs (or first blockchain artworks).

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Note: In the article, I used “halluciphile”s name in lowercase, conforming to the stylistic requests of the artist, even when it is grammatically incorrect in context.

Note: Major thanks to those who contributed to this article, including but not limited to halluciphile, Devoted, Ablockchain, and Day 9.

Disclaimer: Art is subjective and artistic value does not equal financial value. While this article includes facts about Punycodes, how these facts are interpreted is subjective. I included all opposing opinions in this article, but I included my personal opinions too. My inclusive view of art is exactly the reason why I still own 9 Punycodes (the same number as I had since the rediscovery) in my collection of 100+ NFTs.