Yesterday, the official Twitter account of OpenSea suddenly changed its name to “OpepenSea”. Not only that, the profile picture of the official OpenSea Twitter account was also changed to a homemade Opepen OpenSea version posted by @_0ND1 in the comments section of their tweet:
The English NFT community has gone crazy for Opepen, as if dropping a bomb in the quiet NFT market.
Ledger has released its homemade Opepen Ledger version.
Beeple tweeted in support of Opepen.
How did this “Opepen whirlwind” start?
“For the Culture” Movement
On July 12th, the largest holder of Opepen (holding 725 Opepen) @BoredOpepen made an “Offer” to NFT KOL @notthreadguy, proposing to exchange their Opepen 001 series for @notthreadguy’s MAYC used as a Twitter profile picture.
According to @BoredOpepen’s tweet, this “Offer” came with additional conditions. @BoredOpepen requested that @notthreadguy hold the Opepen 001 series for at least 3 months, while they themselves would hold the corresponding MAYC for at least 1 year.
The Opepen 001 series may not look impressive, but using OpenSea Pro, it can be seen that its floor price is currently over 25 ETH, far exceeding the floor price of MAYC.
On July 14th, Trust Way, an upcoming Web3 lottery platform, entered the scene and made a “Offer” of 42.69 ETH for @notthreadguy’s MAYC as a marketing move.
@notthreadguy was not moved by this and stated that the 42.69 ETH “Offer” was a form of “Fud” for his MAYC:
However, on the same day, @notthreadguy posted a tweet with an unofficial “Opepen x MAYC” fan art image:
At this point, “Opepen’s father” Jack Butcher entered the scene and threw out a custom-made Opepen for @notthreadguy in the comments section, causing a stir:
From this day on, many NFT players changed their Twitter profile pictures to the “@notthreadguy Opepen” version. At the same time, many art creations based on “@notthreadguy Opepen” started to appear:
@notthreadguy was moved. On July 16th, he changed his Twitter avatar to the Opepen designed by Jack Butcher in the picture above, and held a Twitter SLianGuaice, which was attended by 3,700 listeners:
It was also on this day that Jack Butcher launched the “Opepen Threadition,” which is the series you may have recently heard of, minted on Zora. Each “Opepen Threadition” is priced at 0.001 ETH (about $2), and all proceeds from this series will go to @notthreadguy to thank him for his contributions to the NFT community.
Currently, “Opepen Threadition” has sold 44,646 copies, which means @notthreadguy will receive approximately 44.6 ETH in rewards through this method. On July 17th, Jack Butcher’s colleague @jalil_eth created 8 more series of derivative art based on Opepen, which has also raised nearly 8 ETH in rewards for @notthreadguy.
“Opepen Threadition”
@jalil_eth’s “ThreadGuy Opepen 009”
This whole thing has made the slogan “For the Culture” popular:
The English NFT community has a feeling of “returning to the original intention”:
“Collecting, entertaining, and supporting the creators you like is a good choice for us to continue moving forward, and it is also a more appealing way of rewarding.”
By now, the origins of the “Opepen whirlwind” have been basically clarified. However, you may still be confused, for example, what is the Opepen 001 series mentioned earlier? Why is it priced so much higher than the floor price of this series (about 0.8 ETH)?
Opepen’s unique way of opening: voting, drawing lots, and 200 series
Opepen is a Free Mint “Open Edition” project launched by Jack Butcher in early January this year. You may be familiar with Jack Butcher. He also created the popular “Twitter blue checkmark” Checks (recommended reading: the “Twitter verification badge” Checks that surged by 3000%: gamifying market behavior to shape art itself)
Like Checks, Opepen is not a “Open Edition” project that has no future after its release. Jack Butcher has played around with it.
First, let’s take a look at an Opepen that is still in the “blind box” stage:
This is an Opepen with the lowest rarity level.
You can see that there is a rectangle divided into six parts in the upper right corner, which represents the rarity of Opepen “blind boxes”. The smaller the highlighted rectangle, the higher the rarity:
The rarity of Opepen is called “Edition Size”.
The rarity levels range from highest to lowest: “One”, “Four”, “Five”, “Ten”, “Twenty”, and “Forty”, a total of six:
Opepen will regularly release new series on its official platform. Whether a series will be used for “image opening” depends on the “voting situation” of the holders. The expensive 001 series mentioned earlier is the first series released by Opepen for “image opening”, and it is used to illustrate the “voting situation” of the 001 series:
First, the “Demand” must exceed 200% for the series to be used for “image opening”. There will be a total of 200 such series, with 80 in each series, resulting in a total of 16,000 “image openings” of Opepen. When the “Demand” exceeds 200%, it means that each series needs to have at least 160 Opepen to choose the series for “image opening”.
Only Opepen with corresponding rarity can choose to open images with corresponding rarity. As you can see, there are 136 “One” level Opepen in the 001 series that have chosen to open images. Since only 80 Opepen will be opened in this series, only 1 of the 136 “One” level Opepen participating in the “image opening” will be lucky enough to be opened with the corresponding image. Therefore, the “Demand” for the “One” level is 136 * 100% = 13,600%. Similarly, out of the 430 “Four” level Opepen participating in the “image opening”, only 4 will be lucky enough to be opened with the corresponding image. Therefore, the “Demand” for the “Four” level is 430 / 4 * 100% = 10,750%.
This gameplay is quite innovative. In the past, there have been projects that handed the right to “image opening” to the holders, but it was basically limited to continuously selecting from a given number of images until the user selected an image they liked. Opepen not only allows the holders to have the right to choose the “image opening” themselves, but also provides 200 series with different styles for the holders to choose from. The holders can continuously observe until the series they like appears, and then take their Opepen to “vote and draw”. This makes a big difference in the original rarity levels – if a series has a lot of people participating in the drawing, you can only hope to be the lucky one, and the price of this series will inevitably differ from other series.
This “image opening” method also does not require burning or minting new NFTs for the original NFTs. Each time you participate in the “vote and draw”, you only need to sign once with your wallet. If you are “selected”, the metadata will be automatically updated to complete the “image opening”.
Currently, Opepen has released 9 different series and there are 191 series in progress. This has pros and cons for operations. The good thing is that holders need to pay attention to the project in order to not miss the “voting lottery” for their favorite series. The downside is that with 200 series, it will be difficult to maintain attention for a long time. However, with Jack Butcher’s “For the Culture” campaign and past marketing efforts, the downsides have temporarily been eliminated…
Conclusion
Regarding the “For the Culture” campaign, I believe it is a heartwarming and successful marketing case, but ultimately the “top players” in this industry are the ones benefiting…
This reminds me of the last time “$TURBO” was skyrocketed due to “crying on live stream”. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t support people in similar situations, or that “top players” shouldn’t receive tips. It’s just that there are too many small and medium-sized creators and builders who are silently pursuing their ideals and facing difficult circumstances. Without connections, they are like invisible people in this industry. Will anyone see their tears and sweat? Will anyone care?
I hope the “For the Culture” campaign will not be a short-lived publicity stunt, but can continue to develop and make more “grassroots” individuals visible. They deserve it.
At the same time, this may also be a sign that OpenSea is distinguishing itself from Blur in terms of “culture”. Since it cannot compete with Blur in the positioning of “Trader’s Paradise”, embracing creators and “culture” and attracting another group of NFT players with “cultural” attributes may be another way out?
Opepen has also shown us that there can still be many ingenious ideas when combining NFTs with art. Setting aside hype, we can still have a lot of fun and interesting ideas, which makes me look forward to how many more fun ideas there can be in the “gamification of art” (recommended reading: “The Gamification of NFTs: Burn-Redeem and Lottery Tickets”).
Is NFT dead? Objectively, NFT as a technology will have many more applications, so it definitely won’t die. Subjectively, whether NFT is dead or alive also depends on whether we can return to the “happy homeland” and enjoy the fun that Opepen brings us, right?
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