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

Open Threadition, online for 2 days, has received 37,000+ mintings. How does Jack Butcher consistently create exceptional NFTs?

Author: Nancy, LianGuaiNews

While the NFT market is cooling down, artist Jack Butcher has sparked a wave of enthusiasm. On July 16, Jack Butcher launched a custom open edition NFT called “Opepen Threadition” on the 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 may have seen his works to some extent. In just six months, Jack Butcher has not only created billions of dollars in trading volume with phenomenal NFT projects such as Checks VV, Opepen, and Checks Element, but also landed on the well-known auction house Christie’s.

Why is Opepen Threadition being sought after by the community? How did Jack Butcher’s multiple NFT projects become popular in a short period of time? LianGuaiNews will explore the truth.

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Originated from 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 their avatars for current MAYC, including the Opepen NFT whale “Bored Elon”.

As a fan of the meme originator Pepe the Frog and Jack Butcher, this anonymous fan believed that Opepen is an extremely important branch in NFT culture, and invited ThreadGuy to replace his avatar with the Opepen 001 he holds (the latest transaction price is 25.69 ETH), with the condition that he must hold 001 for at least 3 months, while he himself retains MAYC for at least a year. However, ThreadGuy rejected it because he considered MAYC to have become synonymous with his brand.

As this event continued to be discussed and fermented, Jack Butcher, the creator of Opepen, also joined in the fun. On July 13, Jack Butcher revealed that he would create a custom Opepen version specifically for ThreadGuy, using the colors from ThreadGuy’s MAYC avatar.

Jack Butcher’s participation eventually “compelled” ThreadGuy to replace his long-used avatar with Opepen, and he specially held a Twitter Slicing 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 derived Opepen trend and 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 16, with a price of 0.001 ETH (about $2), providing more users with the opportunity to participate. It is worth mentioning that Butcher generously gives 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 with a Pepe theme launched by Jack Butcher in January of this year in the context of the PFP NFT dilemma. It consists of 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 artwork or a signal of participation/belief/enjoyment in a set of values. I broadly define this as permissionless creativity in the internet economy.”

Opepen 001

Opepen is inspired by Pepe’s Meme culture and the geometric works of digital artist Batz. Each piece is sized at 24 x 72 pixels and is community-oriented and community-minted, aiming to explore the uniqueness, scarcity, and richness within the Web3 community. In terms of gameplay, Opepen introduces a more community-engaging Drop mechanism, divided into 200 randomly timed “box openings”, with each box containing 80 NFTs 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 box opening will be announced in advance, and Opepen holders can choose to join the artwork preview by signing a signature in their wallet. The decision to release the complete NFT will be voted on within 48 hours based on rarity. A round of box opening will only undergo metadata changes if the vote count reaches 200% (e.g. at least 2 votes for 1/1 and at least 8 votes for 1/4). If the vote count exceeds the 80 slots for this round of box openings, the remaining holders will be selected through an algorithm, and those not selected will retain their NFTs as is. Currently, Opepen has collaborated with different artists and projects to showcase 6 sub-series.

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

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

Four projects achieve over $200 million in trading volume

Prior to entering the NFT space, Jack Butcher was a graphic designer and creative director, working for a well-known advertising agency in New York for 10 years and serving as the creative director for billion-dollar brands. However, these careers did not provide Jack Butcher with the freedom to create, so in 2019, he founded the creative agency Visualize Value. The agency has collaborated with well-known brands such as Ferrari and Michelin, and within just 18 months, Jack Butcher successfully achieved a seven-figure annual income from a company account balance of $58.

In 2021, with the rise of NFTs, Jack Butcher became curious and began to pay attention to and research technologies such as NFTs, metaverse, and blockchain, expressing his views on Visualize Value as an outsider. In Jack Butcher’s view, since the birth of human civilization, humans have been collecting rare items and assigning them value: shells, gems, spices, coins, stamps, wine, and Pokémon cards, all of these were NFTs of the past. With the development of technology, the way value is transmitted is also evolving (as absurd as it may seem), and seeking social capital is an inherent gene. NFTs are just the next version of it. JPEGs can be sold as NFTs for millions of dollars because they represent a triple threat of social capital, entertainment, and utility. Like most key movements of human progress, it all starts with art, and the community itself is a piece of art.

As of now, in addition to Opepen, Jack Butcher has launched three other NFT projects in the past three years, including NFTs, explained in 2021, Checks VVn and Checks Element in 2023. The total transaction volume of these NFT projects exceeds 200 million US dollars.

NFTs, explained

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

“Why is the blue check mark on Instagram so desirable? What does it really mean? What would it be used for if it could be purchased?” Based on this thinking, Jack Butcher ventured into NFTs for the first time and released a work called “NFTs, explained” to explain the difference between NFTs and JPGs. It was sold on Foundation in March 2021 for a high price of 74 ETH.

Checks VV Edition

Checks VV Edition was launched in January 2023, with a limited 24-hour minting period but no quantity limit, priced at 8 US dollars, and eventually obtained over 16,000 minted pieces. Inspired by the Twitter Blue verification badge, this NFT project adopts a simple and clear repetition technique similar to the famous artist Andy Warhol. It is composed of 80 different colors of Twitter verification badges, aiming to express the concept of ownership and identity challenges in the Internet age. “I hope that through this work, it will encourage people to think about what NFT really is. When you buy an NFT, what are you buying?”

Checks VV Edition

With the incentive mechanism of Open Edition and burning to generate rare versions, Checks VV Edition quickly spread. And because Checks VV Edition was set as CCO (Open Copyright), various Checks derivative projects have also emerged, which Jack Butcher has helped promote, even developing a dedicated page to encourage it, making this NFT more meme-like. According to NFTGO data, as of July 18th, the floor price of Checks VV Edition is 0.52 ETH, with a transaction volume of over 59,000 ETH, worth about 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 monoprints, inspired by the four classic elements of earth, fire, water, and air. Each piece in this series is a unique color combination generated by an algorithm, forming these elements and exploring the “evolving relationship between consensus and truth.” At the same time, each physical artwork is handcrafted on a Mailander 202 flatbed 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 sales of 50.10 ETH, valued at approximately 93,000 US dollars at the time. These works were also exhibited at the Christie’s gallery in New York.

Checks Element is a continuation of the Checks VV story, combining Jack Butcher’s contemplation of digital verification with 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 always manages to create a straight line in the winding road, expressing complex ideas through simple visual design and generating resonance. Compared to most NFT projects that control the direction of their products, Jack Butcher combines current trends, actively engages the community, and even encourages them to proactively contribute innovative ideas for continuous dissemination, turning art into a movement.

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