Pride Punks were created in June 2018. At the time, the NFT art scene was super young, and besides CryptoPunks and a few other early innovators, not much was going on.

The idea of PridePunks came because I noticed that the CryptoPunks didn’t have a background, and I thought, “Oh, I could put something in there to make them feel fresh and new.”

At the time, Ethereum felt like the most inclusive community in the Crypto-sphere (that's not saying much but still...), but there weren’t very many statements on inclusivity.

I added the Rainbow because it was Pride and because the Rainbow felt like the most unambiguous statement that all would be welcome.

The Rainbow is a power political statement on the nature of inclusivity in Web3 and (at the time and now) Crypto Art. The Rainbow elevates and differentiates PridePunks as their own creative act of expression: political and artistic.

While PridePunks2018 is not specifically an LGBTQ+ project, rather a political art statement, I hope that the PridePunk DAO will make the inclusion of LGBTQ+ and underrepresented people its primary goal.

The DAO will be funded by a share of the secondary market sales and will have a large reserve of PridePunk tokens with which to sell into the market to fundraise.

Hopefully, what started as a fun side project in 2018, can grow into a real community dedicated to improving diversity and inclusivity in crypto.