Larva Labs is the two-person studio of Matt Hall and John Watkinson, self-described “creative technologists” who have used new and emerging technologies, including the Ethereum blockchain, to make collectible and generative digital art. In 2017 they released CryptoPunks, 10,000 pixel-art characters with a built-in on-chain marketplace that became the prototype for the '10K' profile-picture genre.
Hall and Watkinson met in Toronto in the 1990s net art scene, and by 2017 had already worked together on early web and mobile technology before turning to Ethereum. After giving talks on the promise of NFTs at a Christie's blockchain event in London in 2018, they met curator Georg Bak, which led to early exhibitions of their work at Kate Vass Galerie in Zurich. In 2019 they released Autoglyphs, 512 minimalist compositions generated and stored entirely on the Ethereum blockchain, which they describe as “the cave paintings of on-chain art”. The project was inspired by Sol LeWitt, whose practice of turning written instructions into large-scale wall art they adapted to code: “the instructions are the art”.
