Meet Matt Hall and John Watkinson, the co‑founders of Larva Labs and the original creators of CryptoPunks, one of the first major NFT art collections on Ethereum.

Who Matt and John are

They are Canadian software developers and artists who met studying computer science in the 1990s and have collaborated ever since.​

Together they created Larva Labs, a small studio behind CryptoPunks, Autoglyphs, and Meebits, all influential on-chain art/collectibles projects.

In 2017 they launched CryptoPunks as a “small, weird, but cool experiment” in digital ownership and virtual scarcity, generating 10,000 unique 24×24 pixel avatar NFTs and releasing 9,000 of them free to claim.​​

Why they matter in this context

CryptoPunks helped inspire the ERC‑721 NFT standard and the broader crypto art movement, which later exploded into a multi‑billion‑dollar market and cultural phenomenon.​​

Their work has ended up in major museum collections and high‑end auctions, which is one reason you should know them.​​ CryptoPunks is a masterclass in viral distribution. Since launch, they’ve generated about 1.41M ETH in trading volume, roughly $3.91B, with individual Punks now held by MoMA, LACMA, and the Centre Pompidou.

Matt and John stumbled into viral growth by releasing CryptoPunks as a free, experimental on-chain art project, then realized its traction only after an early Mashable article triggered a rush of claims and trading. They had originally built Punks as a quirky way to explore digital scarcity and drive attention to their studio, not as a grand startup “go‑to‑market” plan, so the early community formed organically around curiosity instead of speculation.

Once they saw people using Punks as online identities and collectors treating them as serious art, they leaned into that behavior. They kept the 10,000-supply fixed, avoided constant tweaks or cash-grab mechanics, and let a self-organized community, not top-down branding, define the culture. Over time, that light-touch stewardship (stability of the contract, consistency of the project’s rules, and respect for collectors) turned an accidental flash of attention into compounding network effects and long-term cultural credibility.