Oppen Threadition received more than 37,000 mints within 2 days of its launch. Why can Jack Butcher always create phenomenal NFTs?

By Nancy, PANews

At the moment when the NFT market is cold, the artist Jack Butcher has set off a boom. On July 16, Jack Butcher launched a customized open version NFT "Opepen Threadition" on ZORA Network, and obtained more than 37,000 coins in just 2 days.

Perhaps many NFT players are not familiar with the name Jack Butcher, but they should have seen his works more or less. In just half a year, Jack Butcher not only created a transaction volume of hundreds of millions of dollars with phenomenal NFT projects such as Checks VV, Opepen, and Checks Element, but also entered the well-known auction house Christie's auction.

Why is Oppen Threadition sought after by the community? What are the secrets of Jack Butcher's multiple NFT projects that can become popular in a short period of time? PANews to find out.

Original from the NFT avatar bidding show, and triggered the Meme effect

In June of this year, after encryption artist Michael Jerome (Twitter name: ThreadGuy) announced his candidacy for the chairman of the ApeCoin DAO Council, the encryption community began to throw out various Offers to bid for his avatar in exchange for the current MAYC. ".

As the "number one fan" of Meme originators Pepe the Frog and Jack Butcher, this anonymous fan firmly believes that Opepen is an extremely important branch of NFT culture, and sent ThreadGuy to replace his avatar with his Opepen 001 (the latest transaction price is 25.69 ETH), the condition is to hold 001 for at least 3 months, and he himself keeps MAYC for at least one year. But was rejected by ThreadGuy because he considered that MAYC has become synonymous with his brand.

As the incident was continuously discussed and fermented, Jack Butcher, the creator of Opepen, also came to join in the fun. On July 13, Jack Butcher revealed that he would customize the Openpen version of the picture specially for ThreadGuy, and the color matching was taken from ThreadGuy's MAYC avatar.

The addition of Jack Butcher made ThreadGuy finally "compromise", replacing his long-term avatar with Opepen, and specially held a Twitter Space event to commemorate this moment. At the same time, this NFT cultural bidding also triggered a meme effect, and a large number of creators and collectors also joined this trend of derivative Opens to create their own stylized Opens, such as the well-known encryption artist Beeple, the NFT trading platform OpenSea, etc.

As the wave of customized Opepen continues to heat up, Jack Butcher launched an open version series called Opepen Threadition on July 16, priced at 0.001 ETH (about 2 US dollars), providing more users with the opportunity to participate in it. pleasure. Notably, Butcher also generously donates all proceeds to ThreadGuy. As of the publication, Oppen Threadition has minted more than 37,000 pieces.

Opepen Threadition

Opepen is actually a Pepe-themed community-driven experimental project launched by Jack Butcher in January this year under the background of PFP NFT's troubles, including 16,000 open-edition artworks that change over time.

"Our goal is to create something that can serve as a unique identifier, such as a piece of art or a signal of participation/belief/enjoyment of a set of values, which I define broadly as permissionless creativity in the internet economy .”

Opepen 001

Opepen is inspired by Pepe's Meme culture and digital artist Batz's geometric works, each with a size of 24 x 72 pixels, community-oriented and foundry-oriented, aiming to explore the uniqueness, scarcity and abundance in the Web3 community. In terms of gameplay, Opepen has introduced a Drop mechanism with a more sense of community participation, which is divided into 200 times for random time "unboxing". The 80 NFTs released each time adopt the Checks gameplay, and there are 6 different version sizes (1 /1, 1/4, 1/5, 1/10, 1/20, 1/40). Each round of unboxing will be notified of the artist and style in advance, and Opepen holders can choose to join the artwork preview by signing their signatures in the wallet, and will vote within 48 hours to decide whether to release the complete NFT according to the rarity of holding. When the number of votes gets 200% (for example, 1/1 requires at least 2 votes, and 1/4 requires at least 8 votes), the metadata will be changed. If the number of votes exceeds the 80 box-opening quota for this round, it will be drawn through an algorithm, and the holders who are not selected will keep the NFT as it is. Currently, Opepen has collaborated with different artists and projects to present 6 sub-series.

Interestingly, Jack Butcher also created the Opepefy tool, any user can upload images to generate their own Opepen, and this method quickly spread in the community, including BAYC giant whale Frankli, DeGods founder Frank, etc. participated in the interaction.

According to NFTGO data, as of July 18, the floor price of Opepen was 0.8 ETH, and the transaction volume was nearly 68,000 ETH, worth over 110 million US dollars.

4 projects have achieved a total transaction volume of more than 200 million US dollars

Before joining the NFT field, Jack Butcher was a graphic designer and art director. He worked in a well-known advertising company in New York for 10 years as the creative director of a billion-dollar brand. But these careers did not allow Jack Butcher to feel the freedom of creation. For this reason, he founded the creative agency Visualize Value in 2019. He has worked with famous brands such as Ferrari and Michelin. $58 successfully achieved annual revenue of one million dollars.

In 2021, when NFT became popular, Jack Butcher began to pay attention and research driven by curiosity, and published his insights on NFT, metaverse, blockchain and other technologies on Visualize Value as an outsider. In Jack Butcher's view, since the birth of human civilization, humans have begun to collect rare items and give them value: shells, gems, spices, coins, stamps, wine, and Pokemon cards, all of which are old-age NFTs. With the development of technology, the way of value transmission is also developing (despite how absurd this may seem), seeking social capital is an innate gene, and NFT is just its next version. JPGEs sell for millions of dollars as NFTs because they represent a triple threat of social capital, entertainment, and utility. As with most pivotal movements in human progress, it all began with art, and community itself is a work of art.

So far, in addition to Openen, Jack Butcher has launched three other NFT projects in the past three years, including NFTs, explained in 2021, and Checks VVn and Checks Element in 2023. The total transaction volume of these NFT projects exceeds 200 million Dollar.

NFTs, explained

NFTs, explained: Explain the difference between NFT and JPG with a white background image and a blue certification logo

"Why is the blue tick on Instagram so desirable? What does it mean? If it can be purchased, what will it be used for?" Based on this thinking, Jack Butcher tried NFT for the first time, and released an article called "NFTs , explained” to explain the difference between NFT and JPG, and sold it at a high price of 74 ETH on Foundation in March 2021.

Checks VV Edition

Checks VV Edition will be launched in January 2023, limited to 24 hours of casting but not limited, the price is 8 US dollars, and finally obtained more than 16,000 castings. This is an NFT project inspired by the Twitter Blue certification logo. It adopts a simple and clear repetition technique similar to that of the famous artist Andy Warhol. The idea of ownership and identity challenges. "I hope that through this work, people will be encouraged to think about what NFT is. When you are buying NFT, what are you buying?"

Checks VV Edition

With the Open Edition (open version) and the incentive mechanism of burning rare versions, Checks VV Edition was quickly spread. And because Checks VV Edition is set as CCO (Open Copyright), various Checks derivative projects are also emerging. Jack Butcher also helped promote it, and even developed a special page for this to encourage, which also makes the NFT more Meme effect . According to NFTGO data, as of July 18, the floor price of Checks VV Edition was 0.52 ETH, and the transaction volume exceeded 59,000 ETH, worth approximately US$97.15 million.

Checks Element

Checks Element was jointly conceived by Jack Butcher and the legendary printmaker Jean Robert Milant and Cirrus Editions. It consists of 152 NFTs and corresponding physical single prints, inspired by the four classic elements of earth, fire, water and air. Each piece in the collection is a unique algorithmically generated color combination that composes these elements and explores the "evolving relationship between consensus and truth". Meanwhile, each physical piece is handcrafted on a Mailander 202 lithography press.

Among them, the auction of works related to water, air and earth elements was auctioned at Christie’s auction house from May 16 to May 23. Exhibited at Christie's Gallery, New York.

Checks Element is a continuation of the Checks VV story, a marriage of Jack Butcher's thinking on digital verification and the physical world to explore the "evolving relationship between consensus and truth".

In short, judging from the short-term popularity of Jack Butcher's NFT works, he can always open a straight line on the winding road, express complex ideas through simple visual design, and resonate. Compared with most NFT project parties who have mastered the product trend, Jack Butcher combined with the current hot spots, and at the same time encouraged the community to actively participate in it, and even let them actively output innovative ideas to achieve continuous dissemination effects, making art a movement.