Golden Observation | Opepen's explosion again, a community's co-creation and win-win situation

Author: Golden Financial Reporter Jessy

A new cultural movement started in the NFT circle.

Opepen, a small frog composed of various square patterns, suddenly became the Twitter avatar of many people overnight, and they all used the same Opepen image.

Opepen is the work of Jack Butcher, a well-known digital artist, and the avatar that everyone changed to is an NFT created by Jack Butcher based on the Twitter avatar of a KOL ThreadGuy who focuses on NFT content output—a MAYC mutant monkey . The basic color of this mutant monkey is green, the eyes and the corners of the eyes are pink, and there is a little red devil with an angel ring on its head. .

What Jack Butcher created is a one-to-one customized oppen according to ThreadGuy's MAYC. It is actually a very cool thing for users to have an avatar created exclusively by the artist for themselves.

An interesting thing happened because many loyal fans of Jack Butcher began to change their Twitter avatars to this customized Opepen, because they felt that ThreadGuy would not change their avatars. There was a "Be a ThreadGuy" frenzy on Twitter.

And when the carnival reached its climax, Jack Butche followed suit with an open series called Open Threadition, which included a tokenized version of his custom PFP for ThreadGuy.

At the end of the story, ThreadGuy finally changed his avatar, and all the income from Openen Threadition will also belong to him.

How the Cultural Movement Happened

The incident started on July 11th, when Bored Elon, the number one Holder of Openen NFT, proposed a deal to ThreadGuy: use his original version of Openen (which countless other Openen NFTs are derived from) in exchange for the latter’s highly influential MAYC (also known as ThreadGuy's avatar).

On July 14th, the situation increased. Web3.0 lottery company @trustwayllc said: "I am willing to provide an Offer of 42.69ETH for ThreadGuy's MAYC."

But ThreadGuy obviously won't sell his MAYC. On the same day that ThreadGuy announced that he won't sell, he posted an unofficial Opepen 2 creation map on Twitter, which attracted Jack Butcher, the author of Opepen. Note - Jack Butcher posted his own official version of Opepen in ThreadGuy's twitter comment section.

This Opepen uses his unique geometric style, color scheme from ThreadGuy's Mutant Ape, redesigned to fit the Opepen format.

Although netizens have expressed their opinion that ThreadGuy will not replace his mutant, but in the end ThreadGuy did, and organized a Twitter Space with more than 3,600 participants to commemorate the moment. In that Twitter Space, the audience was full of users wearing the Opepen avatar that Jack Butcher specially made for ThreadGuy. This is very much like a performance art.

Opensea also joined the carnival in the NFT circle. Opensea modified its official Twitter avatar and name for a period of time for this incident. The avatar has changed from a white boat image on a blue background to a white figure on a blue background similar to the "Opepen" pattern, and the name has also been changed to Opepensea.

On July 16, when the custom-made Openpen craze was at its height, Jack Butche launched an open series called Openen Threadition, which included a tokenized version of his custom-made PFP for ThreadGuy. Each Open Threadition is sold for 0.001 ETH. Notably, Butcher generously donates all proceeds to ThreadGuy.

This is a cultural movement in the NFT circle initiated by users and finally participated by project officials. Moreover, the participants have also been paid for it. As of now, OpenThreadition has more than 40,000 castings.

How virality works

This is a cultural carnival in the NFT circle, and it is also a win-win social experiment.

The atmosphere of the NFT circle is actually different from the atmosphere of the entire encryption circle. Take the official offline event organized by Azuki recently as an example. It is to book the most famous nightclub in the central area of Las Vegas for a whole night and invite Azuki from all over the world. The holder comes to disco. In various tracks in other industries, people gather to hold meetings, research technologies, and the ultimate goal is to connect resources and discuss cooperation.

For users, **NFT is more of a social business card. **Users who own the same series of NFTs have become a circle. Users who really agree with NFT culture use NFT to make friends, which is far more important than trading. The satisfaction brought by NFT profits is high.

Basically, excellent NFT projects also have rich cultural connotations behind them, which are themselves a cultural phenomenon.

The work of Jack Butcher, which caused a wave this time, has become a cultural phenomenon in the circle several times. Jack Butcher is a well-known artist in the NFT circle. He first set foot in the field of encrypted art in 2021. The first project to get it noticed by the crypto world - followed by the little blue tick of authentication on Twitter. Jack Butcher created a 1/1 NFT titled NFTs, explained, which explained the difference between NFT and JPG (NFT = Verified JPG) with a white background image and a blue tick in a visually simplified and complex way. And a high price of 74 ETH was sold on the foundation.

He has since gone on to create VV Checks, an infinite canvas of expression that seeks to challenge notions of ownership and authorship in the internet age. This is after Musk acquired Twitter, he once again used the "little blue tick" to create. This creation is more like a social experiment. The eighty check marks (checks) of different colors actually represent the thinking about the event that Musk made the blue V certification charge, which is the same as Twitter’s small blue tick certification that costs US$8. The NFT is also priced at $8. The transaction volume of the project exceeded US$100 million.

**And Opepen is essentially a sociological experiment done by Jack. **If the above-mentioned Checks is used to test "bottom-up digital verification", Openen is used to test "through PEPE meme + PFP, building high-quality real estate in the digital age", and at the same time, it is the ultimate practice The concept of "exploring NFT as an art canvas".

It is precisely because Jack Butcher's works were originally created on the peripherals of "Twitter", his works and himself are also very popular in the Twitter encryption circle. In addition, the NFT Kol ThreadGuy on Twitter is the center of this topic, so it is expected that it will trigger an explosive spread on Twitter.

Looking at Jack Butcher's projects out of the circle these few times, we can find some "hot" rules, **His projects always accurately hit the current user emotions, and achieve viral spread with the help of social media, **Of course, The project itself needs to be innovative, interesting and fun enough. A very important point in this fun and innovation is to allow users to participate. Jack Butcher repeatedly mentioned that "exploring NFT as an art canvas can go further than an image." His theories are extremely The practice is in Checks and Openen. Take Openen as an example, the opt-in box opening mechanism has enhanced interaction and unprecedented participation. The 200 set of Openen 16K NFT gives it 200 chances to open the box, which allows users to participate in a long period of time Keep surpassing yourself.

In terms of dissemination, **Jack Butcher also mastered the "meme" virus dissemination method. He himself promoted it himself, and also allowed the public to play together with almost zero threshold. During the publicity stage of Openen, he launched the website opepefy , so that everyone can quickly generate their own Opepen. At that time, Twitter became a carnival about Opepen, and attracted the participation of many giant whales. **

Under the climax of this cultural movement, Opepen Threadition was launched in a timely manner, and the cost of participating in the casting was extremely low, and all the income was donated to ThreadGuy. This reward for project co-creators has always been a spirit of the NFT project. Creating together, playing together, profiting in the process, and making friends seems to be the reason why a good NFT project can last for a long time.