One of the most wonderful things about CryptoPunks is that they do not have an official token. Unlike Pudgy Penguins and their $PENGU, or Bored Apes and their $APE, there is no authorised Punk token, although, of course, there are countless tokens that call themselves “$PUNK”, just as there are countless NFT collections that are derivative of CryptoPunks.
This is a relief and a strength to Punk holders; while prices for an NFT collection can skyrocket when a token is rumoured or announced, these can easily plummet again when the token is born. Airdrop recipients sell their windfall, and floor their NFTs. Exposure to the volatile, extractive herd of token hunters couldn’t be a worse fit for a groundbreaking collection like Punks.
What Punks do “have,” even though it is not official, is a community token called $CIG.
Launched in December 2021 and named for the Punk cigarette trait, $CIG is pretty much the opposite of a pump and dump memecoin. It was created by @0xTycoon as an experiment in economic governance and a way to showcase CryptoPunk culture.
A typical 2025 memecoin has a presale full of insiders and a hyped-up social media campaign. It’s often designed for the short term. What’s intriguing about this $CIG community token is that it’s still active and in use over three years later—because of its equitable distribution, entertaining gamification, and the power of Punk community.
At launch, 1 billion $CIG tokens were minted and made available for claim to the wallets containing each of the 10,000 Punks. None were kept for founders, treasury, liquidity pool, etc.
The $CIG claim travels with the Punk token; because Cig Token is kind of a quiet, underground project, it’s not a well known Punk-holder’s benefit, and less than half of Punks have claimed their $CIG!
However, unlike typical memecoins, the ability to mint more $CIG tokens was left open, subject to the rules of the economic governance game laid out in the $CIG smart contract.
While the tokens were dropped to Punk holders, the $CIG economic governance game, centred around a concept called the Harberger Tax, can be played by anyone, and takes place at $CIG’s headquarters—cigtoken.eth.limo.
The object of the game: can you become “CEO of CryptoPunks”?
Anyone, Punk holder or not, can become the “CEO of CryptoPunks” (a tongue-in-cheek title that has nothing to do with the ownership of Punk IP, which is held by Yuga Labs) by buying the title (and an associated NFT) from the past office holder.
To become the CEO, you need to purchase, with $CIG, the title (and NFT) from the previous owner. The purchase price doesn’t go to the previous CEO - it’s burned, which is to help the CEO position become a role of public value, not profit. Once you’ve bought the title, you set a price for sale of the CEO position, and you must pay a daily tax, called Harberger Tax, of 0.1% of the price you’ve set for the title. (This can be paid in advance). Set it high, you’ll have it for a while but pay a steep tax - or set it low, and you risk some enterprising person buying the title and ousting you as CEO!
The CEO has certain privileges: they can set whatever CryptoPunk image they like on the cigtoken.eth.limo homepage (you don’t have to own that Punk, or indeed any, to become CEO, but it’s polite to ask permission to use someone else’s! Or, just use one of the burned Punks as your chosen image).
They can also modify the metadata of the CEO NFT, set a 32-character “graffiti” slogan for their CEO-hood, and, most importantly, they can modify the amount of new $CIG tokens that are created (just as a country’s leadership can affect its monetary policy).
The issued $CIG are regularly distributed as rewards to those who provide liquidity to $CIG trading pools on DeFi site SushiSwap, so this CEO-controlled issuance can play a big role in $CIG price action.
In practice, this odd little game, and the CEOs who have taken the helm, have helped $CIG to persist and even flourish through the peaks and valleys of the crypto and NFT markets, ever since it kicked off in 2021.
The previous CEOs - there have been 20+ of them - are recorded in the CEO Hall of Fame and they’ve had different purposes: monkeying with $CIG issuance, making a point to the Punk community, or just flexing.
There have been a few other points of interest in the $CIG ecosystem, including benefits for people who stake $CIG or provide liquidity for the token. There’s also been a few cool PR stunts, like the $CIG founder dropping 1M $CIG into the wallets holding each of the eight Alien Punks in 2024.
Thus far, there have been few other adoptions of $CIG, except for cryptopunks.eth.limo marketplace, which allows you to kickstart a Punk auction on their site with a small $CIG donation.
I think the token has so much potential, because it is an art, game and economics project built in honour of Punks, another work of art and economics project. It offers crypto communities another vision of what a token can be, do, and even say. Tokens are about so much more than speculation and grift. Good tokens are designed to unite communities and expand their potential. It would be amazing to see the ability to transact in $CIG appear in other areas of the Punk-verse, and even further afield.