Opepen Threadition has been online for 2 days and has minted over 37,000 tokens. Why is Jack Butcher always able to create NFTs with phenomenal popularity?

Open Threadition, online for 2 days, has minted 37,000+ tokens. How does Jack Butcher consistently create highly popular NFTs?

Why is Opepen Threadition so popular in the community? How did Jack Butcher’s multiple NFT projects become popular in a short period of time?

By Nancy

In the current cold NFT market, artist Jack Butcher has sparked a wave of enthusiasm. On July 16th, Jack Butcher launched a custom open edition NFT called “Opepen Threadition” on ZORA Network, and it was minted over 37,000 times in just 2 days.

Perhaps many NFT players are not familiar with the name Jack Butcher, but they should have seen his works to some extent. In just six months, Jack Butcher has not only created hundreds of millions of dollars in transaction volume with phenomenally successful NFT projects like Checks VV, Opepen, and Checks Element, but also landed on the well-known auction house Christie’s.

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Why is Opepen Threadition so popular in the community? How did Jack Butcher’s multiple NFT projects become popular in a short period of time? Let’s find out from LianGuaiNews.

Originated from the NFT avatar bidding show and triggered a meme effect

In June of this year, crypto artist Michael Jerome (Twitter name: ThreadGuy) announced his candidacy for the chairman of ApeCoin DAO, and the crypto community began to offer various bids to exchange his avatar for current MAYC, including from the Opepen NFT holder “Bored Elon”.

As a fan of the meme originator Pepe the Frog and Jack Butcher, this anonymous fan firmly believes that Opepen is an extremely important branch of NFT culture and sent an invitation to ThreadGuy to replace his avatar with the Opepen 001 he holds (recently sold for 25.69 ETH), on the condition that he holds 001 for at least 3 months, while he himself retains MAYC for at least one year. But ThreadGuy refused, considering that MAYC has become synonymous with his brand.

As this event continued to be discussed and escalated, Jack Butcher, the creator of Opepen, also joined in. On July 13th, Jack Butcher revealed that he would specially customize a version of Opepen’s image for ThreadGuy, with the color scheme taken from ThreadGuy’s MAYC avatar.

Jack Butcher’s participation finally made ThreadGuy “compromise” and replace his long-used avatar with Opepen, and he held a Twitter Sliance event to commemorate this moment. At the same time, this NFT cultural bidding also triggered a meme effect, with a large number of creators and collectors joining this wave of derivative Opepen trend, creating their own stylized Opepen, such as well-known crypto artist Beeple, NFT trading platform OpenSea, etc.

As the custom Opepen trend continues to heat up, Jack Butcher launched an open edition series called Opepen Threadition on July 16th, with a price of 0.001 ETH (about $2), to provide more users with the opportunity to participate. It is worth mentioning that Butcher generously donates all the proceeds to ThreadGuy. As of the time of writing, Opepen Threadition has been minted over 37,000 times.

Opepen Threadition

Opepen is actually a community-driven experimental project launched by Jack Butcher in January this year in the context of PFP NFT facing difficulties. It includes 16,000 open edition artworks that change over time.

“Our goal is to create something that can serve as a unique identifier, such as an artwork or a signal of participation/belief/enjoyment in a series of values. I broadly define it as unlicensed creativity in the internet economy.”

Opepen 001

Opepen is inspired by the meme culture of Pepe and the geometric works of digital artist Batz. Each one is 24 x 72 pixels in size and is community-oriented and cast-oriented, aiming to explore the uniqueness, scarcity, and richness of the Web3 community. In terms of gameplay, Opepen introduces a more community-driven Drop mechanism, which is divided into 200 random time “drops”. Each time, 80 NFTs are made public using the Checks gameplay, with 6 different versions and sizes (1/1, 1/4, 1/5, 1/10, 1/20, 1/40). The artist and style for each drop will be announced in advance, and Opepen holders can choose to join the artwork preview by signing the signature in their wallet. The decision to release the complete NFT will be determined by a vote based on rarity within 48 hours. The vote count needs to reach 200% (e.g., at least 2 votes for 1/1, at least 8 votes for 1/4) before the metadata can be changed. If the vote count exceeds the 80 slots for this drop, it will be randomly selected through an algorithm, and the holders who are not selected will retain their NFT as is. Currently, Opepen has collaborated with different artists and projects to showcase 6 sub-collections.

Interestingly, Jack Butcher also created the Opepefy tool, which allows any user to upload an image to generate their own Opepen. This gameplay quickly spread in the community, with participation from BAYC whale Frankli, DeGods founder Frank, and others.

NFTGO data shows that as of July 18th, the floor price of Opepen is 0.8 ETH, with a trading volume of nearly 68,000 ETH, worth over $110 million.

4 projects collectively achieved over $200 million in trading volume

Prior to entering the NFT field, Jack Butcher was a graphic designer and art director, working for a well-known advertising company in New York for 10 years, serving as the creative director for billion-dollar brands. However, these careers did not give Jack Butcher the sense of creative freedom he desired. Therefore, in 2019, he founded the creative agency Visualize Value, which has collaborated with well-known brands such as Ferrari and Michelin, and achieved annual revenues in the millions of dollars in just 18 months from a company account balance of $58.

In 2021, when NFTs started to gain popularity, Jack Butcher became curious and began to pay attention to and research NFTs, metaverses, and blockchain technologies. As an outsider, he published his insights on NFTs, metaverses, and blockchain technologies on Visualize Value. According to Jack Butcher, since the birth of human civilization, humans have been collecting rare items and assigning them value: shells, gemstones, spices, coins, stamps, wine, and Pokémon cards. These were the NFTs of the past. With the development of technology, the ways in which value is transmitted are also evolving (although this may seem absurd). The search for social capital is an inherent gene, and NFTs are just the next version of it. NFTs such as JPEGs can be sold for millions of dollars because they represent a triple threat of social capital, entertainment, and utility. Just like most significant movements in human progress, it all starts with art, and the community itself is a work of art.

As of now, in addition to Open, 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 has exceeded 200 million US dollars.

NFTs, explained

NFTs, explained: Explaining the difference between NFTs and JPEGs with a white background and a blue certification logo.

“Why is the blue checkmark on Instagram so desirable? What does it really mean? What would it be used for if you could buy it?” Based on this thinking, Jack Butcher first tried his hand at NFTs and released a work called “NFTs, explained” to explain the difference between NFTs and JPEGs. It was sold for a high price of 74 ETH on Foundation in March 2021.

Checks VV Edition

Checks VV Edition was launched in January 2023, with a limited 24-hour minting period but unlimited quantity, priced at $8, and ultimately achieved over 16,000 mints. This NFT project was inspired by the Twitter Blue verification badge and used a simple and clear repetition method similar to the famous artist Andy Warhol. It consists of 80 different colors of Twitter verification badges arranged to express the concept of ownership and identity challenges in the internet age. “I hope that through this work, people will be encouraged to think about what NFTs really are. What are you buying when you buy an NFT?”

Checks VV Edition

With the incentive mechanism of the Open Edition and the burning to generate rare versions, Checks VV Edition spread rapidly. As Checks VV Edition was set as CCO (Creative Commons), various derivative projects of Checks continued to appear, and Jack Butcher helped promote them. He even developed a dedicated page to encourage them, making this NFT even more meme-worthy. According to NFTGO data, as of July 18th, the floor price of Checks VV Edition was 0.52 ETH, with a transaction volume of over 59,000 ETH, worth approximately 97.15 million US dollars.

Checks Element

Checks Element is a collaboration between Jack Butcher and 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 artwork in this series is generated by a unique algorithmic color combination, representing these elements and exploring the “evolving relationship between consensus and truth.” At the same time, each physical print is handcrafted on a Mailander 202 offset printing press.

Among them, the works related to the elements of water, air, and earth were auctioned at a personal auction held by Christie’s from May 16th to May 23rd, with a sales amount of 50.10 ETH, equivalent to approximately $93,000 at the time. These works were also exhibited at Christie’s Gallery in New York.

Checks Element is a continuation of the Checks VV story, combining Jack Butcher’s thoughts on digital verification with the physical world to explore the “evolving relationship between consensus and truth.”

In conclusion, from the short-term popularity of Jack Butcher’s NFT works, he always manages to create a straight path in a winding road, expressing complex ideas through simple visual designs and generating resonance. Compared to most NFT projects where the project team controls the direction of the product, Jack Butcher actively involves the community by combining current hot topics, even encouraging them to actively contribute innovative ideas for continuous dissemination, making art a movement.

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