Opepen Edition (OPEPEN) is a digital art collection, launched on the Ethereum blockchain, as a 60-minute open edition NFT drop on January 8, 2023. It is a Pepe meme-themed Ethereum NFT series^[13]. It was created by a British artist, who was based in New York City, the founder of Visualize Value, Jack Butcher.^[1][9]

Overview

Opepen is a collection of 16,000 open-edition NFTs whose artwork changes over a series of drops and reveals. The Pepe memes have influenced Jack to create a unique form of NFT edition.^[2]
The 'scapepe' scape of each Opepen NFT is a 24*72 px canvas, inspired by the 'Scapes' banner project, where all his artworks are displayed on 24*72 px canvases.^[7][8][10]

Origins

Jack was inspired by the geometric works of a digital artist, Batz. Jack, who is also an avid NFT creator and collector, then came up with an idea to create a unique artwork, his own version of Batz's style only by using rectangles and ellipses. The 'Opepen' name was derived by combining 'open' from 'open-edition' and 'Pepe' from the 'Pepe the frog' meme.^[4] However, he has later changed the metadata to a single green circle with a white background. ^[12]

Jack mentioned his admiration towards Batz's style of artwork in one of his tweets saying:

For some context on this piece, my timeline has been full of the incredible work of @batzdu.^[3]

Reveal

The Opepen NFTs weren’t revealed immediately after the launch, but rather over a series of drops that occur periodically, on a timeline that Jack decided at random.

Each drop includes 80 Opepens out of the total 16,000, with 200 sets included in the entire project. In which, some of the drops are like art print editions, others include small variations.
^[6]

Opepen Opt-ins

Each Opepen owner has to opt-in to artwork previews that they like to have the full NFT revealed, which will only occur if the proposed metadata change receives a 200 percent opt-in rate. Even after opting in, the distribution of the art is random. For the 200 percent opt-in to occur, the 80-NFT drop requires at least 160 opt-ins.

By creating this system, Jack wanted to experiment with the idea of uniqueness in the digital realm, a theme that often crops up in his web3 projects. But instead of leaning into themes of scarcity and rarity as he did with Checks VV, he has been working with the concept of abundance in art and how that influences the choices his collectors make. With Opepen, he also wanted to foster a sense of community among his collector base by allowing them to participate in the reveal process and influence the outcome of each drop.

In this way, Opepen creates a sense of anticipation and participation. Moreover, Opepen rewards its collectors for holding Checks NFTs, which creates buying utility for both of Jack's projects.
^[5]