PNKSTR: The Most Addictive Experiment in Crypto Right Now.
The rollercoaster ride of crypto’s most talked-about asset
This morning, I woke up to a post from the TokenWorks team about the perpetual buying, selling, and burning mechanism that is Punk Strategy ($PNKSTR).
A coin I first picked up at an $8 (ish) million market cap—which then ran to $80M—started to sell off after news of an exploit in the contract.
If you’ve got no idea what I’m talking about, I wrote a piece about it here.
TokenWorks posted:
“Sadly, as a result of this exploit, we believe we have found a bug in the 8 currently deployed NFTStrategies (PunkStrategy is NOT affected). This hasn’t been exploited yet, and it wouldn’t be profitable for the exploiter, but we believe it is better to get ahead of it before the DoS attack is performed while the strategies are just getting started.”
I’ve said before that these projects live and die by their code.
As attention grows, so does the number of attack vectors. And lack of financial incentive doesn’t always stop adversarial activity in crypto. There are a ton of millionaire morons out there.
Before the post below went live, I made the call to de-risk by moving 30% of my holdings into ETH to mitigate risk slightly, considering I was already in profit.
Founder Adam Lizek (@Rhynotic) followed up:
“Good morning, will have a full post out by noon. I actually think these 8 strategy tokens will be fine, albeit slightly different. Experimentation brings new (sometimes strange) innovation and experiences. Keep on strategizing.”
The funny thing is, had I gone out last night and got white girl wasted as planned, I wouldn’t have read my phone until this afternoon and missed the chaos of this crypto shit storm.
Here’s the current state of play with PNKSTR:
Since the exploit was flagged, the protocol has actually purchased 3 more Punks, bringing their total to 17 and about halfway to buying an 18th. Remember—the sell-off generates fees, and that volatility feeds the machine.
One X account broke it down perfectly:
“TLDR on Punk & NFT Strategies exploit/bug by @token_works : - $PNKSTR is safe. It actually will thrive over the next few days as people panic over the situation on the other strategies. - $SQUIGSTR (SquiggleStrategy) can be exploited to swap squiggles from the contract for some other Art Blocks NFTs. This is an actual exploit where money can be made by an attacker. - All strategies except Punk can be tricked into swapping an NFT it owns for another one of the same collection by an attacker. No direct financial reason to do it though. - Now NFTs received by the contract as part of a swap cannot be sold by the contract, because it only lists what it buys, not some random NFT it holds. This leads to NFTs potentially burned forever in the contract.”
Big names like Gmoney, Bored Elon, Seedphrase, and Redbeard all praised the team’s transparency.
As Redbeard put it:
“A lot of people would not go public with the issue… Not @Rhynotic. Because he has integrity and truly understands what it means to build on-chain in a decentralized ecosystem. He wanted to be upfront, honest, and transparent. This is part of the great experiment we call the blockchain. Keep on strategizing.”
Bored Elon added:
“You guys are doing great. The exploit attempts are a signal you’re onto something big. If you guys feel like you need additional funds to hire an audit team I’m sure the community would contribute to the expense.”
In the middle of all this, Beeple even featured PNKSTR in his Everydays—something that would usually rocket a token to Valhalla, if not for the timing of the exploit slowing momentum.
It brings us back to where we left off, pretty much.
Bored Elon again:
“This will likely go to $500M in 2025. It’s a simple (but actually not BS) flywheel. Imagine an internet museum that takes all admissions and donations and puts it into buying extremely rare and coveted art. And then opens satellite locations that also pay dues back to the original museum. 2 + 2 = 40.”
And now, as of a few hours ago, TokenWorks confirmed the issue has been resolved:
All funds are safe, PunkStrategy is unaffected, and ERC20 tokens remain secure. The bug in eight strategies could “brick” NFTs, but they can be swapped back to unlock ETH and keep buy-and-burns running. Only SquiggleStrategy is being reworked, and new launches are delayed by a few days for security reasons.
Their TLDR was simple:
“Everything is safe. All new strategies will be protected. Original eight strategies (minus PunkStrategy which is unaffected) have slight mechanical twist that lends itself to SquiggleStrategy being functionally reworked as ‘Day One AB.’”
Final thoughts.
Regular readers know I go deep with research on my longer posts, but I’ll also be adding these quick, on-the-pulse updates. Feedback welcome.
The irony of the last 24 hours? If I had gone out and got hammered, I’d have missed the whole storm and not sold that 30%. For transparency, I’ve already rotated back into PNKSTR, down $1,000 in fees, which I can live with.
What impresses me most is the transparency and execution of the team. These perpetual buy-and-burn mechanisms thrive and falter based on their code, and as attention grows, so will the attacks. However, this team looks solid—even though I knew little about them beforehand.
In my opinion, PNKSTR is still that degen play.
You’ve got to accept it could go to zero. But if it plays out, it could also be the biggest opportunity of 2025.
The live stream is tomorrow, September 29th, 6pm EST.
Pencil it in—it’ll be a humdinger.
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