Early this morning, CryptoPunk #2386 changed hands on the blockchain in a surprising transaction. The shocking part? The sale price was just 10 ETH, even in today’s sluggish NFT market, which is a jaw-dropping figure.
At the time of writing, the floor price for CryptoPunks remains around 30.45 ETH. What makes this even more astonishing is that CryptoPunk #2386 is one of the rarest “Ape” types, with only 24 in existence, second only to the 9 “Alien” punks. Due to the scarcity and the reluctance of top holders to sell, such high-tier CryptoPunks are rarely available on the market.
Back in 2022, when NFTs were still hot, CryptoPunk #2386 received an offer of 1,800 ETH. Just hours after the latest transaction, offers for this punk shot up to 600 ETH, meaning the mystery buyer could immediately flip their 10 ETH investment for 600 ETH—a 60x profit.
Clearly, this sale was not a normal transaction. Some in the NFT space have already dubbed it a “heist.” So how did this happen? Ethereum ecosystem developer Quit offered a detailed explanation.
A few years ago, enhancing NFT liquidity was a major focus in the industry. A protocol called Niftex emerged, allowing NFTs to be fractionalized into fungible ERC-20 tokens (referred to as “fragments”) to improve liquidity.
On September 26, 2020, CryptoPunk #2386 was fractionalized on Niftex with an estimated value of 450 ETH. It was split into 10,000 fragments, now held by 257 different users.
Over time, as the NFT market cooled, Niftex shut down, but its contracts remained active, with CryptoPunk #2386 still held within the protocol’s smart contract.
Niftex’s contract allowed two paths to reclaim the original NFT. The first was to collect all the fragments, which is difficult given their wide distribution. The second was to make a “forced purchase” offer, where if no fragment holders object within a 14-day window, the NFT can be bought at the offered price.
On August 28, an address starting with 0x282 made a forced purchase offer of 0.001 ETH per fragment (a total of 10 ETH).
Due to Niftex’s inactivity, most fragment holders didn’t notice the offer. However, Quit pointed out that at least two did. One holder took no action, possibly thinking there was still time, while another (@gmoneyNFT) actively opposed the offer.
According to Niftex’s rules, to object, a higher price must be offered for the fragments. Since 0x282’s bid was 0.001 ETH per fragment, any valid objection would need to exceed that amount.
However, @gmoneyNFT’s counteroffer was only 0.000001 ETH per fragment, falling short of the required amount, and the objection failed.
Over the next 14 days, no one else submitted a valid counteroffer, so 0x282’s forced purchase succeeded. They acquired the rare CryptoPunk #2386 for just 10 ETH, 70% below the current floor price of the collection.
The identity of 0x282 remains unknown, and it’s uncertain whether they will sell the punk, which has already received offers of 600 ETH and is expected to rise further.
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