Larva Labs

About Larva Labs

Larva Labs is a New York-based software studio founded in 2005 by Canadian software developers Matt Hall and John Watkinson. The duo's journey began with creating applications for platforms like the T-Mobile Sidekick, eventually leading to over fifty apps, including some best-sellers. Their portfolio expanded to iOS and Android, where they developed over twenty more applications and collaborated with major companies like Google and Microsoft. A notable early project was Androidify, an app developed with Google that allowed users to customize the Android mascot.

The company pivoted to the burgeoning blockchain space, where they became pioneers in the Non-Fungible Token (NFT) market. In June 2017, they launched CryptoPunks, a collection of 10,000 unique 24x24 pixel art characters algorithmically generated and stored on the Ethereum blockchain. This experimental project, inspired by the London punk scene and cyberpunk, was a seminal creation in the NFT ecosystem and served as the inspiration for the ERC-721 token standard, which is now foundational to most digital art and collectibles. Initially, the CryptoPunks were offered for free to anyone with an Ethereum wallet, a strategy that helped foster a community and drive organic growth.

Following the success of CryptoPunks, Larva Labs launched Autoglyphs in 2019, recognized as the first on-chain generative art on the Ethereum blockchain. This project featured 512 unique artworks created by a generative algorithm contained entirely within the smart contract, a key distinction from other NFTs where the art is stored elsewhere. In May 2021, they released Meebits, a collection of 20,000 unique 3D voxel characters designed for use as avatars in virtual worlds and games. The Meebits contract included a custom marketplace enabling complex trades, such as swapping multiple Meebits in a single transaction.

Larva Labs' business model centered on the creation and sale of these unique digital assets. Revenue was generated from the initial sales of their NFT collections and subsequently from a percentage of secondary market sales, facilitated by smart contracts. The company operated its own marketplaces for CryptoPunks and Meebits without charging service fees. In a landmark deal in March 2022, Larva Labs sold the intellectual property for both the CryptoPunks and Meebits collections to Yuga Labs, the creators of the Bored Ape Yacht Club. As part of the acquisition, Yuga Labs gained ownership of the brands and logos, while Larva Labs' founders retained their Autoglyphs project.